The Hills of Inaba
by XxChronOblivionxX
Summary: The power of the Fool is infinite. A blank slate that adapts perfectly to any situation. Naoto, born into the Seta family, does not have this luxury. When she moves to Inaba and inherits a new destiny, everything changes. Naoto Seta is socially awkward, insecure, and introverted. And she might just be Inaba's only hope for uncovering a killer. P4 Protagonist Switch.
1. Chapter 1: A Different Seta

I was drifting.

That was all I knew for sure.

A dark purple haze surrounded me on all sides, and I did not know which way was up or down. I could see nothing. There was nothing to orient myself with as I continued to drift unmoored through this never-ending fog.

Normally, this would bother me.

But, for some reason, I couldn't bring myself to care, which was certainly unusual. I couldn't really see anything, but it didn't really matter, did it? This wasn't reality. It felt pretty comfortable, and it was relaxing, and both were things I desperately needed more of in my life.

And it felt right to just not care. So I continued to drift.

An indeterminate amount of time passed before something… _else_ entered into my pleasantly misty mindscape. I still couldn't quite see anything, but I could hear a very faint, but deep rumbling off in the distance. The sound grew louder and louder until strong and piercing beams of light shattered through the darkness around me.

Too bright. Much too bright.

A car, or as it seemed to be, a limousine, soon came into focus behind its two strong headlights. It drove on a surface that I am positive was not there before. I could hear a slight squeaking of the tires as the limo slowed to a halt in front of me. The calmness I had felt before was gone, replaced with the more familiar feeling of unease.

Suddenly, I was no longer observing the stretch limo from the outside; I was _inside_ the vehicle itself. The interior looked quite expensive and ornate, with delicate wine glasses lining the shelves on my left. The entire color scheme was centered around a deep marine blue that went into everything from the backlighting for the wine shelves, the fabric on the seats, the round table at the other end, and the clothing of the- wait, what?

I focused in on the two other figures present. The one who drew my immediate attention was sitting directly on the opposite end of the car, a balding old man hunched over the table, steepling his gloved hands beneath a nose that was far, far too big. It protruded directly out of his face, nearly four inches long.

As if to provide contrast to her elder's bizarre appearance, a blonde, primly dressed woman was sitting perpendicular to him at my right, similarly garbed in a deep blue. Comparatively, she looked completely normal, if not overly formal and composed. Indeed, both of them were almost unnaturally still with their eyes closed, the only hint of their continued existence being their pristine composure and posture.

Finally, the old man's eyes opened to look directly at me. His eyes were round and quite bloodshot, as if he'd not slept in weeks, though nothing in his posture indicated such a thing. His mouth widened to a smile as he started to speak.

"Welcome to the Velvet Room."

His voice was, among many other things, rich. It would've been quite soothing if not for the sharp inflections that would smoothly jolt any daydreamer back into full attention.

The old man examined me for a few moments before arching an eyebrow suddenly. "Oh my, it seems we have quite a unique guest visiting us today," he chuckled and lowered his hands to address me fully. "My name is Igor, and I am delighted to make your acquaintance." Igor slightly bowed his head as he made his introduction. I nearly bowed back before realizing the futility of the action.

If he could read my body language, if, indeed, I actually had a body at present, he showed no acknowledgement of my hesitance as he waved a hand to draw attention to the room itself. He continued, "This place exists between dream and reality, mind and matter. It is a room that only those who are bound by a 'contract' may enter. It is quite possible that such a fate awaits you in the near future." Igor slightly cocked his head toward me. "Now then," he entreated, "why don't you introduce yourself, hmm?"

I briefly pondered that I was being asked to introduce myself to someone who my mind made up, but even asleep, my brain functioned well enough to understand the absurdity of applying logic to any dream, even one of mine.

Two words came floating to the top of my limited consciousness and I spoke them aloud.

"Naoto Seta."

Igor lightly chuckled, "Ah, I see. Well, then, let's take a look at your future, shall we?" He procured a small deck of cards from his sleeve. They had an intricate, symmetrical design on the back with what looked like a theatre mask in the center. "Do you believe in fortune telling?" Igor inquired as he began to smoothly shuffle the cards with practiced ease.

_'Not particularly, no,'_ I quietly thought to myself. I was by default disinclined to believe in anything that wasn't proven in some way, and fortune telling was one of those annoying "well you can't disprove it, can you?" things that the irrationally minded clung to as a way to make sense of the things that happened to them. I refrained from saying as much out loud.

Igor continued nonplussed at the lack of an answer. "Each reading is done with the same cards, yet the result is always different." He let out another small chuckle. "Life itself follows the same principles, doesn't it?"

Now finished with his perfunctory shuffling, he smoothly laid out the first seven cards face-down on the table in a circular formation with one card in the center. With a flick of his wrist, the rest of the deck disappeared into nothing. Igor reached for the far card on my right and flipped it over, revealing a somewhat crude pictorial representation of a tall building being destroyed by a massive lightning strike, along with the Roman numerals XVI on the bottom.

The old man's eyebrows suddenly arched. "Hm, The Tower in the upright position in a placement representing the immediate future. It seems that a terrible catastrophe is imminent," he said with a serious face. He quickly moved to the next card in the sequence. He continued, "The card indicating the future beyond that is..." and flipped that card as well. This one had the number XVIII on it with a crescent moon in the center with a face on it.

"The Moon, in the upright position." Igor elaborated, "This card represents 'hesitation,' and 'mystery.' Very interesting indeed." He turned his attention back to me. "It seems you will encounter a terrible misfortune at your destination, and a great mystery will be imposed on you. In the coming days, you will enter into a contract of some sort, after which you will return here. The coming year is a turning point in your destiny, and if the mystery goes unsolved, your future may be forever lost. My duty is to provide assistance to our guests to ensure that does _not_ happen."

As I started to reel from the intricacy of this dream, Igor suddenly snapped his fingers. "Ah, I have neglected to introduce my assistant to you." He extended a hand in the direction of the blonde woman. "This is Margaret. She is a resident of this place, like myself."

The woman fully turned to me and said, "My name is Margaret. I am here to accompany you on your quest."

Her brief self-introduction over, Igor formally concluded his speech. "We shall attend the details at another time. And until then, farewell." Igor bowed his head as my vision started to dim slowly into nothingness.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

* * *

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

My eyes shot open. A quick glance of my surroundings confirmed I was back on the train and not still in that weird limo.

I breathed a sigh of relief. As unique as the dream was, it was more than a little disconcerting. For a moment, I ruefully wondered if my brain was simply trying to cope with the stress. I was already painfully aware that I had a tendency to work myself up, and I'd been trying to counteract it, but it was starting to seem like I would never be able to change that fact. Recent events hadn't exactly had a relaxing effect on me either. Surprises rarely do, especially big ones. For example, I certainly hadn't expected my mother to ship me off to live with her brother for an entire year in a small town in the middle of nowhere while she worked overseas.

Well, I was surprised that it happened, but not entirely shocked at my mother's willingness to do so.

I glanced out the window and couldn't help but smile wistfully. A bright green field of grassy hills stretched out in front of me. _'Well,'_ I thought, _'at least the view's not bad.'_ I supposed this was one redeeming factor of the locale. And even better, it looked quiet. Sitting under a tree and just soaking in the silence could be pretty relaxing. With a book. Or three. My bright view turned pitch black as the train entered a tunnel, and that was the end of that.

Though this was far from my first time moving to a new town, this was the first time I'd be staying with people I'd never met before. I only really got a few cursory details about my uncle and young cousin when my mother was still trying to sell me on the idea.

Her brother, Ryotaro Dojima, was a detective for the Inaba Police Department, which, in all honesty, I had to admit was pretty cool. His wife had actually passed away a few years back, and he now lived alone with their only child, a little girl named Nanako, who was about seven. While further prodding revealed that my mom didn't really know anything else about his life and hadn't even met Nanako once, I did find out that Ryotaro was a pretty brash kid, full of passion and his ideals. Or, at least, that was what I surmised from what my mother told me, and, more importantly, how she said it. I didn't miss the slight clenching of her teeth as she described his "stubbornness." It was obvious that the two of them had a somewhat stressed relationship, probably stretching back to their childhoods. They had no doubt butted heads on more than one occasion.

While I didn't have any overt evidence to think the company would be unpleasant, there were still a couple of causes for alarm. Firstly, Inaba was a town very far removed from the metropolis I was used to. It was relatively small with a very quiet, rural lifestyle. While the quietness wouldn't go unappreciated, it came at the price of a lack of actual things to do. I had done some research on the town, and it seemed that the only distinguishing landmark was the Amagi Inn, which would hardly be of any use to me. There were no cinemas and only one public library other than the small and mostly academic one at Yasogami High, where I would be going for the duration of my junior year.

I sighed, depressed at the thought. _My entire junior year._ That would be the second reason I was not looking forward to this. A year spend in a place with very little to do did not entice me in the slightest. Beyond any desire I had for isolation and silence, I needed something to do.

And it was fortunate that this train trip was so long, as it gave me time to prepare to meet the people I would be living with for a whole year. And by "prepare," I really meant "postpone thinking about lest I give myself a damn anxiety attack." Ever since I was young, I had rarely been able to talk with people without either driving them off with the sheer force of my conversational awkwardness or panicking and saying something exceedingly stupid. I could usually maintain a somewhat decent barrier of politeness, but when that broke, I had nothing. Now I just tended to avoid personal interactions whenever possible. It certainly annoyed my socialite mother to no end, but I had long gotten over that particular disappointment.

But something that worried me way more than I'd ever be willing to admit was how the two Dojima's taking me in would react to it. At best, they would respect that and just keep their distance. That really was the best I could hope for. I had endured enough attempts at a forced relationship from people who clearly didn't want to understand me at all.

Suddenly, I heard a voice coming over the intercom.

**"We will arrive in the Yasogami Terminal in a few minutes. Passengers headed for Inaba City, and Yasoinaba Station, please go to the other side of the platform."**

I looked at my watch. It flashed **3:58 PM** at me in its blue neon light. Just a few minutes ahead of schedule, then. According to the text message I had received, I was to be picked up at the train station at four. I allowed myself a brief moment of resignation before standing up and reaching for my bag in the overhead bin.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

* * *

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

The bright glare of the sun assaulted my eyes as I walked out of the train station, duffel bag in hand. I winced, holding a hand up as a shield. _'Damn, I should really get a hat or something.'_

A male voice called out to me.

"Hey! Over here!"

I picked my head up at the noise, honing in on the man waving at me. He seemed to be somewhere in his forties, dressed in a suit with his free hand draping his jacket over his shoulder, and clearly shared my mother's black hair color. Hiding behind him was a little, brown-haired girl, peeking her head out, looking at me cautiously. Ryotaro Dojima and his daughter, Nanako, obviously.

I walked over to them, the familiar feeling of trepidation already starting to buzz inside me. I immediately tried to suppress it as best I could. I repeated a mantra in my head. _'First impressions are important. First impressions are important. Come on, Naoto. You can handle this.'_

My uncle waited for me to reach them and smiled warmly. "Hello, Naoto. Welcome to Inaba. I'm Ryotaro Dojima, and I'll be taking care of you for the next year."

I bowed slightly, "Thank you for your hospitality, Dojima-san."

Dojima raised an eyebrow, and, much to my surprise, let out a hearty laugh. "Ha-ha. No need to be so formal. I've changed your diapers before, you know."

I opened my mouth, jaw working soundlessly for a second, and closed it again. I panicked slightly. _'How the hell am I supposed to respond to that?' _Fortunately, it seemed I wouldn't have to, as Dojima stepped to the side and nudged the previously hiding little girl in front of him. He continued, "This is my daughter. Come on, Nanako. Introduce yourself to your cousin."

Nanako's eyes glanced up at mine and immediately looked back down. She squirmed a bit. "...hello." she managed to say, before quietly darting back behind her father's back.

Dojima chuckled. "What are you so shy for?"

Nanako's head simply retreated further out of view.

He sighed wearily. "Ah, well. Let's be off then. My car's just around the corner." He turned to offer his hand to Nanako, which she clung to, and walked off, leaving me to follow behind.

Even as we walked, my tense mood did nothing to relax. _'Okay, okay, calm down. That wasn't so bad. You didn't say anything stupid.'_ I paused. _'Well, you didn't really say much of anything, but that's all right. It'll be fine. I think.'_

As my mind circled itself in truly dizzying self-analysis, I started to become vaguely aware that Nanako was not-so-subtly glancing at me out of the corner of her eye. Any curiosity on Nanako's part was understandable, as was any nervousness. _'I would imagine that having a stranger move into your house would rankle anyone's nerves, especially for one so young. Though that might just be me,'_ I pondered with a frown. Anything could set off my nerves.

_'First impressions, Naoto!'_ I turned to her and gave a little smile, causing her to again tear her gaze away with a blush. Despite myself, I couldn't help but give a small chuckle at my cousin's shyness. A lot like me at that age. Hopefully, she would eventually be able to get over that timidity.

Just as I never really did.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

* * *

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Compared to the series of train rides I had endured that day, the drive back to the Dojima household was relatively short. Dojima had even tried to strike up a conversation with me a few times along the way by asking me questions, like about how my mother was doing, but my concise two word answers pretty much put a stop to that. He didn't seem too put off by it, at least. We actually had to stop about ten minutes in at "Moel" gas station after Nanako announced that she had to use the restroom and that no, she couldn't wait until she got back home.

I didn't really need to stretch my legs after so short of a trip, so I just remained in the car as Nanako went inside, Dojima wandered off somewhere, and a gas station attendant with a very interesting hair color filled up the gas tank. Out of curiosity, I had glanced up at him, only to find him looking right at me. I'm almost certain the windows of Dojima's car were completely tinted from the outside, and the silver-haired attendant's gaze immediately shifted away, but it still freaked me out a bit.

Eventually though, we finally arrived at the Dojima household.

"Alright, we're here." Dojima said as he shifted the car into park while Nanako began to unbuckle. I glanced out the window. It was a decently sized house that didn't really stand out in any way. My kind of place, really.

I got out of the car after grabbing my bag and followed my two relatives to the door, but as soon as I got to the door itself, my body tensed up and refused to move any further. Swallowing heavily, I stared at the open door.

_'Gods, this is weird.'_

_'Come on, Naoto, just walk in the door.'_

_'I've never even been in this place, I don't really know anything about these people, and they don't know anything about me.'_

_'They're your family!'_

My internal struggle was interrupted when I felt a sudden pressure on my right shoulder. It took only a moment to realize that it was definitely a hand. Panicked, I whirled my body around to see… nothing and no one there. I looked up and down the street, but I was utterly alone. My mouth gaped like a fish. Was that really my imagination?

_'Evidence suggests that it was, Naoto. I highly suggest relaxing a bit so your body stops making up excuses to freak out,' _said the admittedly more rational part of my brain.

A male voice came from behind me.

"Everything all right here?"

I turned around to find Dojima standing in the doorway with a slightly concerned look on his face. I felt my face grow warm.

"Ah, y-yes it is. Thought I heard something," I replied uneasily, starting to walk into the door but hesitating once again at the threshold.

Dojima's expression quickly turned into one of understanding, and he smiled warmly. "This is your home now, you know. Come on in."

I flushed again. _'Great one. First day here and you already look like a damn fool.'_

Still tense, I managed to take a step forward into their home.

"I'm home," I mumbled quietly to myself. Not nearly quietly enough though.

"Welcome home," said Dojima cheerily, to my immediate and infinite dismay.

While I struggled to solve the mystery of why the hell I would say something so stupidly cliché, Dojima turned around to head into the main area of the house. After a moment, I began to follow him.

My mind flashed back to my little scene outside on the street. It certainly qualified as strange. I could have sworn I had felt _something_ on my shoulder, and I didn't think I was really that tired.

I did recall one image from when I turned my head around though. It was of a vacant street, and a flash of silver at the very corner of my peripheral vision, fully disappearing by the time I had turned my head around completely.

I shook my head to clear out these extraneous thoughts. It was really not necessary to find something extra to worry about on top of the already considerable stress that coming to this town was causing me.

After stopping to slip my shoes off, I walked into the main room, where Nanako was already switching on the TV, much to Dojima's exasperation. Just like the exterior of the house, the inside was pretty nondescript and ordinary. The small kitchen to my left, the dinner table, the other dinner table, and the living room were all cozily squeezed into the same general area, with only a change of flooring actually marking where the living room began.

Dojima turned back at me. "Well," he said with the smile that he always seemed to have, "Kitchen and living room are here, bathroom's to your right, and all the bedrooms are up those stairs. Come on," he beckoned me over to the stairs, "I'll show you to your room and let you get settled."

I mutely followed him, clutching my bag and climbing the small staircase. He led me into a room at the top of the stairs and flicked on the light. I took a step in and looked inside. The room actually a lot nicer than I thought it would be, with a small couch, work desk, futon, and a small TV on top of the dresser. A few large, unopened boxes were sitting by the couch. They were undoubtedly holding all the clothing and other miscellaneous items that my mother decided to send over, and a couple dozen books from my personal library that I decided to send over. I had already read them all, so they were more of a last resort, something to turn to should all of my other avenues of entertainment run dry.

Let it not be said that I don't properly prepare for every eventuality.

"Dinner will be ready in a few minutes. I'll call up when it is," he said as he walked out of the room. I closed the door behind him and looked around once again.

_'Not too bad,'_ I thought, pleasantly surprised. My new room had everything I could need, sans a few… particular things that I had the foresight to pack and ship here.

I only just started to set up my ever-present laptop, which was one of those particular things, when Dojima called up that dinner was ready. I sighed dejectedly. Part of me had been hoping to lose myself in a game for a bit, but it would seem that the day was not quite over yet. Still, I supposed that I should probably abstain from isolating myself so soon after arriving, and I was fully aware that my laptop had exactly that effect on me.

With admittedly great reluctance, I trudged downstairs to eat. Dinner looked to be one of those pre-bought meals at supermarkets, but I was fine with that. I was plenty used to them. Besides, Dojima didn't strike me as much of a cook, and Nanako was seven.

Soon after we began to eat, Dojima spoke up. "So, Naoto. Your mom's working overseas, was it?"

I looked up. "Uh, yes. In America."

"Yeah, that certainly sounds like her," he said with a slight frown on his face. It seemed like my theory on the relationship between the two of them was pretty spot on. Dojima cleared his throat and said, "Listen, I know it's gotta be a bit rough to move all the way out here when you don't have much choice in the matter, even if it's only for a year. I can't imagine you'd be super excited about this. But, even so, Nanako and I are both happy to have you. You're part of the family now, so make yourself at home."

For a second time that day, I had no idea how to respond. As I struggled to form a response, a cell phone suddenly started ringing. His perpetual smile immediately melted into a grimace.

"Ugh, who's calling so late?" He flipped his phone open and brought it to his ear. "Dojima speaking... Oh, I see. Where was she last seen?... All right, I'll be right there."

He snapped the phone shut and looked at both of us with a slightly guilty look on his face. "Sorry you two, but I've got to go take care of some business. Go ahead and eat without me. I don't know how late I'll be." He turned to his daughter. "Nanako, help her out tonight, okay?"

Nanako noticeably wilted before saying, "Okay."

Dojima smiled. "Knew I could count on you. Well, I'm off." He grabbed his jacket and rushed to the door. After he opened it I heard the soft pitter-patter of raindrops falling outside. Dojima turned back to us. "It's raining out. Nanako, what did you do with the laundry?"

"I already brought it in!" she replied with a hint of pride. This response surprised me a little, but not too much. Single parent children were usually forced to have more responsibility around the house, especially if their parent has a busy job. I knew from personal experience, spending many nights alone while my mother worked late. I hadn't seen my father since my parents divorced, so there really wasn't anyone else to take care of me. I learned to take care of myself, and it seemed it was the same for Nanako.

"Ah, good job. See you guys later." Dojima walked out and closed the door behind him, leaving Nanako and I utterly alone in an uncomfortable silence only filled by the muted raindrops outside. I turned to Nanako, only to see she had already grabbed the remote and was switching on the TV.

_'Damn, she moves fast,'_ I thought, smirking slightly. When the weather channel came up and the anchor started talking about the rain that was expected to continue throughout all of tomorrow, my cheery disposition soured considerably. Fortunately, Nanako did not seem to sense the dark storm cloud that was my current mood.

"Let's eat," said Nanako. After an additional moment of righteous indignation at the Inaba weather system, I started to calm down and eat my meal.

Without anything else to focus on, my attention soon locked back onto the TV, as the prospect of starting a conversation wasn't very appealing to me. The weather report was over and the anchors were discussing a political scandal that seemed to be big news, showing photos of a man in a suit and a beautiful woman in a red kimono.

The reporter began speaking, **"... City council secretary Taro Namatame is under fire for an alleged relationship with a female reporter. His wife, enka ballad sensation Misuzu Hiiragi, revealed to this station that she will likely pursue damages."**

_'Huh,'_ I thought, _'I guess that even small towns like this have their political scandals. This might be interesting.'_ I had something of a budding fascination with politics, as lame as that was. The reporter continued.

**"In response, Eye Television has decided to cancel all of announcer Mayumi Yamano's televised appearances. Until allegations of an affair with Mr. Namatame are resolved, she'll remain off the air and out of the public eye."**

Apparently, Nanako did not share my interest.

"This is boring," she cut in before flipping to another channel. A bright and cheery commercial for Junes popped up, with a peppy voice saying, **"At Junes, every day is Customer Appreciation Day! Come see for yourself, and get in touch with our products!"** And then, that godforsaken jingle played, taunting me. **" Every day's great at your Junes! "** Ugh. Nanako brightened considerably though.

" Every day's great at your Junes! " Nanako sang cheerfully, all traces of shyness and apathy gone from her, just because of a TV jingle she liked.

I started to smile at this display of childish innocence, but then a spike of pain shot through my skull. My eyes clenched shut as I winced, and I brought my hand up to my forehead. Then, a wave of nausea assaulted my stomach and I doubled over.

"Are you okay?" asked Nanako, clearly alarmed, but I could barely hear her through the inferno my mind had suddenly become.

Through willpower alone I managed to force myself to take deep breaths as slowly as I could manage, if only to prevent myself from puking my dinner all over their carpet. That would've been an embarrassment from which I'd never have been able to recover. Beyond that one conscious thought, all of my senses were almost completely drowned out by the pounding in my head and the riot in my stomach.

It was only when I finally recovered enough to open my eyes again that I realized a few things. I was lying on the ground on my side, my face was covered in sweat, and Nanako was kneeling next to me with her hand on my shoulder, in a panic.

I reflexively flinched away from the physical contact and quickly scrambled to sit back up, suppressing the returning nausea. Nanako looked at me with concern.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"I'm fine, I think," I said, hastily trying to placate her while wiping the sweat off my forehead.

Nanako frowned. "Um, do you want some water?"

I gave a grateful smile and said, "Ah, yes please." Nanako jumped up and ran to the kitchen, leaving me to get to the crux of the matter.

_'That… was weird. What the hell could have caused that?'_ I struggled to come up with a probable explanation, and sighed. _'I guess I'm even more stressed out than I thought. Either that, or I'm actually ill.'_ Neither were very attractive possibilities. I hated crowds and I hated being the new kid more, but missing the first days of the year and starting late would only make me stand out more.

Nanako returned with a clear glass of water, which I hastily accepted and gulped down. The water wasn't very cold, but it did help settle my stomach. I looked back down at my food, before deciding emphatically that I probably shouldn't eat anything else tonight. It was a shame to leave it only half-finished, but should something like that happen again, I didn't want to have a whole lot of food in my stomach.

I then realized how exhausted my little episode had left me.

I looked at Nanako. "Thanks. I… I think I should go to bed early tonight," I said and stood up. Nanako hesitated, but nodded.

"Okay," she said, still looking at me with concern. I supposed that was understandable given she just watched me go spasming to the ground with no warning. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight," I replied, and walked up the stairs.

When I reached my door, I remembered with some guilt that I was leaving Nanako to clean up dinner by herself. I sighed. Nothing I could really do about it at this point. _'I'll make it up to her later,'_ I promised silently. I walked in the room, willfully ignoring the temptation of my laptop, undressed and soon got comfortable under the blankets.

Slowly falling into slumber, I could only hope that I could get through this year without major incident.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

* * *

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

_Meanwhile, in the Velvet Room..._

After their guest left, all pretenses dropped, yet Igor still sat in complete silence. This was not unusual, for ever since Margaret had been called to serve Igor, she had known he had a naturally solemn demeanor. What was unusual, unprecedented even, was this slight but definitely present feeling of tension emanating from him. Igor had what humans would call an expert poker face, and Margaret knew with near certainty the only things she saw of him were things he chose to show her. So if Margaret could detect this change in Igor, there could only be one possible reason for that.

Igor was worried. Really worried.

There was little doubt as to what the source of his concern was. Even Margaret had been a bit surprised when she saw the nature of their guest, this "Naoto Seta." It was something that they certainly hadn't expected, and something that might grow into a big problem later on. For something so significant to escape his foresight, Margaret struggled to reconcile it. Even so, they might have to change their future plans soon, so Margaret began to speak.

"What do you intend to do in light of this?"

Igor did not respond. And so Margaret waited. About a minute passed before Igor finally spoke. "I'm not fully sure."

Margaret frowned. Yet another unexpected occurrence. She had never seen her master like this. At this rate, Igor might have to contact _his_ master for assistance, though even that might not yield any fruitful results. The Velvet Room was one of the only methods _he_ had to impact the progression of events. Beyond that, his influence was limited.

"Shall we contact Master Philemon?" she asked.

Another long pause.

"...perhaps," Igor eventually conceded. "Though it may be possible that some path can be determined from the cards of our guest." He leaned forward and reached for the third card in the sequence, the card that was supposed to represent the distant future.

Margaret had assumed that most of the 'fortune telling' Igor had performed was mostly for show and for the benefit of their guest. It did indeed carry the feel and script of a predetermined performance rather than a genuine divination of the future. Her intuition told her that Igor felt much the same way.

But, despite herself, she could not help but hold her breath in anticipation. Because if there were ever a place where fate could override chance, it was the Velvet Room.

Igor raised the edge of the card to view its face, which remained hidden from her view. Margaret held no illusions that this was unintentional.

A few seconds later, Igor smiled. The tension in his body started to melt away.

And then, something happened. Nothing could have prepared either of them for it. For it was something so ludicrous, so preposterously unlikely that nothing but the influence of Fate could have made it happen.

The card fell back down away from Igor's hand, revealing a second card that had been stuck to the back of the first one.

And Igor's smile disappeared completely.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

* * *

**A/N: And here is the inaugural chapter of my first ever full series: _The Hills of Inaba_. I've been working on this chapter for a _very_ long time, because I have both a perfectionist and a procrastinator streak, but I'm finally biting the bullet and putting this out there to get the ball rolling.**

**Just to clarify, the main premise behind this story's creation is that Naoto Shirogane takes the place of Souji Seta (aka the canon protagonist of Persona 4), turning her into Naoto Seta. This is basically done to give the reins of the Investigation Team to Naoto from the start. Don't worry though, Souji will show up sooner or later.**

**As you might have noticed already, Naoto Seta has many differences from the canon Naoto Shirogane. This is mainly done because so much about canon Naoto comes from her backstory. I confess I might be funneling some of my own personality into her, but then again, I consider myself to be of the same arcana as she. Bonus points to whoever can deduce which arcana that is (Hint: It isn't what it is canonically). Appearance-wise, **Naoto Seta looks basically the same as Naoto Shirogane, except slightly older, no hat, and wears girls clothing. ****

**I take all criticism very seriously, and I truly have a passion to make this series as good as it is in my head, so please drop a critique if you have the time. Plus knowing that people are reading will give me more drive to write, which I most certainly need.**

**EDIT: Put in manual line line breaks for the mobile readers who can't see the regular ones.**


	2. Chapter 2: The First Day

I woke up with pounding in my head, and gave a muffled groan into my pillow.

I froze. _'Wait. My bed feels... odd.'_

I shot upright and looked around to find an unfamiliar room. I panicked for a moment before remembering the day before. _'Right. Inaba.'_ I sighed. Clearly I hadn't fully woken up yet.

It was then I also realized that it wasn't my head that was pounding, it was the door.

"Are you awake? Dad told me to wake you up now." I heard a young girl's voice call in. Nanako, I remembered.

"I'm awake," I called back groggily. Clearing the sleep out of my eyes, I hurriedly threw back the covers and swung my legs off the bed. I knew from experience that I would invariably fall back asleep if I didn't immediately escape my bed after waking, and today was important.

"Okay. I'm going to make breakfast, so come down when you're ready," she said, her footsteps fading as she hopped down the stairs.

I put my head in my hands, only to realize that I was covered in sweat. _'Huh? That's strange. My bed wasn't that warm. I guess I must have had another nightmare or something._' I'd had plenty of those before, though I usually remember them. Being a walking ball of neuroticism forces the brain to relieve stress whatever way it can.

With great difficulty, I stood up and excavated my school uniform from my suitcase. It was a rather plain, grey sailor uniform with a yellow tie. And a _skirt_. I sighed. I wasn't really a fan of skirts. So impractical. I preferred function over form any day of the week, and skirts made basic things more difficult than they needed to be. And this particular one was a bit too short for my liking. There was nothing I could do about it though, so I grabbed the uniform and my toiletries and headed to the bathroom

Twenty minutes later, I was dressed, ready, and standing in front of the mirror with a dissatisfied expression. I curled a bit of my hair around my finger, trying in vain to figure out if there was anything else I could do about my appearance. My blue hair was short enough that it required very little maintenance in the morning, which was perfect for me, but there wasn't a whole lot I could do with it either. My chest was, ah, _ample_ enough, but there was no way that I was capitalizing on that. Frowning at my lack of options, I absentmindedly fussed with my uniform. When I realized what I was doing, I just huffed and crossed my arms.

_'Dammit, stop doing that. You look fine.'_ I chided myself. '_Besides, it isn't as if you're trying to impress anyone.'_

Taking a bit of bittersweet solace from that statement, I snatched up my already-prepared schoolbag and walked down the stairs to see Nanako sitting at the table by herself in front of a plate of toast and eggs, with a similar plate across the table. I noticed that Dojima was nowhere to be seen, and there wasn't a spot at the table for him. I said as much to Nanako as I took my seat.

"He had to go to work early," she replied matter-of-factly. "He said there was some kind of trouble at the police station. My dad's a detective."

I already knew as much, but tried to show interest anyway. "Oh." I said, "Does he have to leave early a lot then?" Nanako stiffened slightly and her head dipped.

"... not all the time," she murmured, now looking down at her food with slumped shoulders.

I mentally slapped myself for my indiscretion. _'You idiot! This is why you don't talk to people!'_ I hastily tried to distract her from my massive faux pas by changing the subject. "O-oh. Well... did you, um, do the cooking yourself then?"

By some miracle, Nanako did seem to cheer up as she puffed up in pride. "Yep! I can toast bread and make eggs sunny-side up. Dad doesn't really cook, so we buy dinner."

I did _not_ want to say something stupid and hurt her feelings again, so I just smiled and focused on eating my food. It wasn't bad at all. The eggs were cooked adequately and toast isn't something that's easy to mess up.

Nanako seemed to find the lack of conversation more uncomfortable than I did, and asked, "You're starting school today, right?"

I nodded.

"My school's on the way, so… we should go together," she said with a smile. I froze mid-bite, for it was only then that I realized that I didn't actually have any idea of how to get to Yasogami High. I hadn't even thought about it before now.

"Y-yeah. That sounds like a good idea." I replied nervously. '_Wow, dodged the bullet there.'_

"Okay!" she cheerily replied, and went back to eating her breakfast. Thankfully, this time, she was content with just that.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

* * *

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Just as the weatherman had predicted, the rain had continued throughout the night and was still pouring when we exited the house. Nanako grabbed us umbrellas before we left, so we stayed pretty dry, unlike the few underprepared students who periodically ran past us at full speed, holding their book bags above their heads.

Neither of us felt the need to start up a new conversation, so we walked in silence. It was when we had started to walk alongside the river that ran through the middle of town that Nanako finally stopped and turned to me.

"You keep going straight from here," she said, pointing up the path. "Your school's at the top of the hill." Nanako turned around. "My school's this way. Bye!" She waved at me as she walked away.

I gave a wave back, making sure to smile. It was kind of her to take such a detour to make sure I knew where I was going. Another thing I'll have to pay her back for.

As I started to walk along the path again, my smile melted into a tight frown. The volume of commuting students around me was still fairly sparse, but that would soon change, and I would be surrounded. My stomach was already doing preliminary flips, and my hands were getting more and more jittery.

_'Okay, okay...'_ I tried to console myself. _'This won't be that bad, just do what you usually do. Strategize. Think or focus on anything to distract yourself from the dense, teeming, masses of students around you, looking, staring at you to see who the new kid- Ah! Stop that!'_ This was so not going to go well. The fact that I'd done this same, damn "new kid" routine multiple times didn't ease my fears about doing it at all. As familiarity with my surroundings started to set in, I knew the nervousness would fade somewhat, but that didn't help me now.

I heard a strangled yelp come from behind me, and I turned my head to see a poor, poor student attempting to ride his bike while holding an umbrella with one hand. He zoomed by me at top speed, and it was obvious that he was rapidly losing control of what he was riding. He only got a few more meters before veering to the right and crashing magnificently into a streetlamp. Upon impact, he flew through the air and landed hard on his side.

I winced in sympathy. _'Yeesh, that had to hurt. Maybe I should go see if he's alright.'_ I started to take a step forward, but hesitated again.

_'Yeah, let's not do that,'_ said my inner voice. _'He's fine. He doesn't need some new girl checking on him.'_

_'But...'_

I grimaced, torn between walking over and avoiding it. I wanted to try to help him, but... my body just refused to move. My decision was never made, anyway. By the time I had looked up, the student was speeding away, having already gotten up and re-mounted his bike, this time without the umbrella. Leaving me staring after him, feeling quite foolish.

_'Told you.'_

_'Oh, shut up,'_ I thought back, a warm feeling encroaching on my cheeks. I started walking again. _'God, that was awful. A boy crashes his bike, and I have a goddamn crisis over what should've been a simple decision.'_ My face twisted into a scowl, my head dipped downward, and my stride became stiff as my mind circled in on itself.

It was not until I had passed the gate of the school that I was broken out of my thoughts. I looked up, seeing… a rather dull and nondescript building. I felt a pang of disappointment. I wasn't expecting anything glamorous, but something about the greyish exterior of the stone building combined with the still-persisting rainfall made the entire scene all the more depressing and undesirable.

I sighed. I seemed to have been doing that a lot lately.

At least my episode of self-derision had distracted me from my previous worries, though those were now making a rapid comeback. With some degree of difficulty, I took deep breaths and forcefully swallowed my anxieties and focused on the task at hand: being the new kid at Yasogami High.

_'Okay, battle plan. For the first few weeks, people are going to notice you a lot. This is a small town where most faces are pretty familiar, and most of the students will have already gone to school with each other for most of their lives. You are a completely new face. People will probably approach you out of curiosity at first, but once your novelty wears off, you'll fade into the background and cease to be a major focus. For now, just be fairly polite, don't do anything to utterly humiliate yourself, and things will be fine.'_

And so, with a grim determination, I walked through the front doors of Yasogami for the first time.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

* * *

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

It took all of ten minutes before things started to go really wrong for me.

It started out fine enough. I quickly found the main office, and mainly just stood around while the secretary checked me in and attempted to locate my file on their ancient computer system. The secretary was a nice enough young woman, thankfully too busy with all the manners of business that the first day of school brings to a faculty to start being overly friendly with me, as some adults I've known have tended to do. They never did understand that they weren't making things easier for me, merely more uncomfortable.

Eventually though, she finally found what she was looking over and handed me a sheet of paper.

"Okay, Seta-san, here's your homeroom and class information." she said, pointing to the sheet. "Wait just outside this office, and your homeroom teacher will come and get you soon. He'll take you to your class and introduce you." She checked her watch. "Homeroom is about to begin, so he should be along shortly."

I gave a small bow and thanked her before exiting the office. The volume of students had increased while I was in there, and they were all running to get to their homeroom in time. My chest felt tight from all of the people, but I refused to leave my spot. _'Just stand up against the wall, don't make eye contact with anyone, and your teacher will be here soon enough.'_ I comforted myself. Thankfully, no one really noted my presence or approached me while I waited.

Having a couple minutes of downtime, I glanced at the sheet of paper in my hands. It seemed that I was in Room 2-2 and my homeroom teacher was Kinshiro Morooka. In addition to that, my class schedule was laid out, showing the variety of subjects I would study that year. It ranged from things I was relatively good at, like Math and History, to the one class that has always been the bane of my existence: Physical Education. I scowled. Excuses to get out of that class were always difficult to conjure up, and I never had the courage to try and put them into action.

The secretary had said that my teacher would 'be along shortly,' but it wasn't until several minutes had passed, the trickle of students having almost completely halted, that he finally showed up. I looked up when I heard someone clear their throat loudly.

…

_'Oh my, that's unfortunate.'_

The man was dressed in a dark blue suit with a mismatched checkered tie, and he had a very unusual hairstyle that could best be described as a bowl cut that exposed his entire forehead. But all of that came secondary to his very prominent overbite that attracted attention like a neon sign.

"You Seta?" he barked. I was caught off-guard by his brusque speech.

"Uh, y-yes, I am... Sir." I hastily added.

He impatiently gestured to the staircase. "Well, come on then! I'll take ya' to your room," he said, and immediately turned and started to walk back up the stairs.

I stuttered out a vaguely confirmative remark before jumping up to follow him. My apparent teacher, Mr. Morooka, didn't seem inclined to wait for me, and I had a feeling that making him angry would not be in my best interest.

After I got to the top of the stairs, I realized something with horror: my class introductions were coming up. _'Oh god, I am so screwed.'_ There was a small chance that Morooka would just introduce me himself and I wouldn't be required to say anything, but those odds weren't in my favor. Even worse, there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

The hallways were practically empty, but I could hear muffled chatter from inside the classrooms. Morooka stopped in front of the room marked "Room 2-2" and marched into the classroom, whipping the door open and yelling "Homeroom's started!" The chatter grinded to a halt immediately as everyone rushed to get to their seats.

Though Morooka demanded a lot of attention, I could feel several pairs of eyes lock in on me as soon as I entered the room. I stiffened, but firmly kept my body moving and stopped next to him.

"Listen up, everyone!" he barked from his podium. "I'm Kinshiro Morooka, your homeroom teacher from today forward!" A few people wilted in their seats. He obviously had something of a reputation in this school. "First things first! Just 'cause it's spring doesn't mean you can swoon over each other like love-struck baboons. 'Long as I'm around, you kids are going to be as pure as the driven snow!"

Several students' faces frowned in confusion, but no one dared question anything he was saying.

"Now I hate wasting my time, but I better introduce this transfer student," he said, gesturing his hand to me. Every pair of eyes in the room locked in on me, and I suddenly felt very, very small. My hands started to shake, but I forced myself to clench them into an iron grip on my bag handle. "This little girl's been thrown from the big city out to the middle of nowhere, so you stupid boys better not even _think_ about making a pass at her! Tell 'em your name, kid, and make it quick."

_'Come on, social butterfly. Just speak your own name out loud. Nothing fancy.'_ My chest tightened again, and my mouth felt dry, but I forced myself to speak before I could think about it anymore.

"N-Naoto.. Seta," I managed to force out. My body was as tense as a spring board and my voice was shaking, but I at least managed to get full words out. Fortunately, Morooka seemed content with that.

"Okay then, go and take your seat, uhh," he paused, peering around the room, "there in the middle row."

I grimaced inwardly, but kept my head down as I hurried to the only vacant seat available, smack dab in the middle of the room, and plopped down a little too fast. Among all of the possible desk locations I could have gotten, the center of the room was among the worst. The back row was obviously greatly preferred. Bonus points if it was the corner desk by the window. But alas, it was not meant to be. Instead, I was completely surrounded by other students, with neighbors on all sides.

As Morooka launched into a heated speech about ground rules, I concentrated entirely on taking deep breaths to calm my still rapidly beating heart. _'Solid C+, old sport. Shaking like a leaf, and stuttered the first name, but coherent enough. Certainly better than some past performances.'_

I was so entrenched in my thoughts that I did not notice the brunette sitting directly to the right of me lean over until she had already started speaking.

"Rotten luck you get stuck in King Moron's class." she whispered. Startled, I turned my head over to her. The first thing that I noticed about her was that she was wearing, of all things, a bright green athletic jacket with numerous buttons on it. She smiled sympathetically. "Hang in there. I hear we'll get used to him eventually."

Not knowing what else to do, I simply nodded and went back to staring a hole into my desk. Whatever her reaction was, I couldn't see it.

After several minutes, with no end in sight for Morooka's rant, and with me still getting quick glances from other students, I let out yet another quiet sigh.

_'This is going to be a long day.'_

_-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x_

* * *

_-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x_

It was indeed a very long day, but, eventually, the end of it finally arrived. The many introductory lectures had all winded to a close, and we had met all of our teachers. Some of them were… eccentric to say the least. Our World History teacher, Ms. Sofue, actually wore a full Egyptian headdress throughout the entire day. When she was finally asked about it, she lectured us on how important Egypt was, but never really gave a concrete reason as to why she felt compelled to keep its fashion alive.

As for my desk neighbor, I made the conclusion that she was tolerable. She was rather pushy for my taste, but she didn't seem mean-spirited about it. In fact, she seemed to be making an overt effort to be friendly to me. Certainly, I'd been seated next to worse people. Her curiosity would fizzle out eventually.

The fact that she and the girl in front of her were the only students I had seen that day that actually modified their uniforms and didn't seem to get into any trouble for it still surprised me, though. I would have thought that Morooka, of all people, would clamp down on any presumed violation of school policy, but he never even acknowledged it. _'Oh well. Guess I'll have to check out that school manual a bit more closely.'_ Even if modifications were allowed, I doubted I'd be able to ditch the skirt. And even if I could, it would probably draw more attention than I'd ever want.

As the ending bell rang through the school, Morooka addressed us all. "That's all for today. Normal lectures will start tomorrow."

My entire class let out a collective sigh of relief, and everyone, except for me, began to chatter away with their neighbors. But only a few seconds passed before our imminent escape was rudely interrupted by a woman's voice coming through the intercom. I immediately recognized her as the secretary that helped me in the front office.

**_"_Attention, all teachers. Please report to the Faculty Office for a brief staff meeting. All students must return to their classrooms and are not to leave the school until further notice."**

_'Dammit.'_

Morooka, almost out the door already, growled in annoyance and turned to us. "You heard the announcement. Don't go _anywhere_ until you hear otherwise!" He quickly left the room in a huff.

Part of me was curious of the reason behind holding onto all the students after the bell had already rung, and on the first day of school no less, but most of me was just supremely agitated that I couldn't escape the classroom. Another depressing situation that continued the ongoing combo, slowly destroying any optimism that my mind could muster in its more disillusioned moments.

Most of the students around me complained loudly about this news to their friends and classmates, while I feigned busyness by jotting down the name of every book that I could remember reading onto a sheet of paper. I could still detect a few people in my peripheral vision glancing over at me, some of them looking a _bit_ too long, but those were pretty easily ignored.

Police sirens started to wail outside. _That_ caught my attention, as well as everyone else's. Most of the crowd headed over to the window, but thick fog had gathered outside the windows, not allowing any of the students to see the outside world.

As several students voiced their curiosities of the sirens and complaints of the fog, I turned my attention back to my notebook and started to think.

_'The school keeps all the students inside after the school day is already over, and then police sirens go off? Not a good sign. Chances the two events are unrelated are pretty slim, as those sirens sound pretty close, and it's obvious from the class' reaction that this doesn't happen very often.'_ I could think of a variety of explanations behind this turn of events, and all of them, besides the slim possibility that this was just a big coincidence, were not good. Not good at all. Something happened, of that there was little doubt.

What that something was, I could only guess.

The subsequent announcement all but confirmed my suspicions.

**_"_Attention, all students,"** said the same voice on the intercom. **_"_There has been an incident inside the school grounds. Police officers have been dispatched around the the School Zone."**

_'I knew it. They were connected.'_ I scowled. The theories that remained somewhat plausible in wake of this new information got worse as I went along.

The announcement continued. **_"_Please stay calm and contact your parents or guardians as soon as possible, and quickly leave the school. Do not disturb the police officers. Head directly home."**

While the first two commands contradicted each other because my guardian _was_ a police officer, the last one was long-awaited, and eagerly followed. I sent off a text to Dojima that I was on my way home, and got up to leave. But just as I stood up from my desk, my tracksuit-wearing neighbor walked up to me, her friend in the cardigan in tow.

"Hey, are you going home by yourself?" she asked.

After a moment's pause, I nodded. This was apparently the wrong thing to do.

Her face lit up like a thousand-watt light bulb. "Well~~ why don't you come with us?"

It was technically phrased as a question, but the tone of it clearly showed that she had already decided to walk home with me.

_'... DAMMIT.'_

All I wanted to do was say no, but that could have consequences. _'Gah, I don't have any good reason to decline her offer, and I can't exactly say that I hate being around people. And just saying no without a reason would be even worse.'_ Terrible situation, but I didn't have a choice. Offending her would be rude, and it was better to not piss off the person that I would be sitting next to for the rest of the year.

"Uh, sure," I said. Her smile widened.

"Great! I'm Chie Satonaka," she said, pointing to herself, and then pointed to the girl behind her. "And this is my best friend in the whole world: Yukiko Amagi."

Contrary to her friend, Yukiko was the very picture of grace. She had long, black, and frankly beautiful hair that was held up by a red headband. She seemed to be wearing the school uniform, but wore a red cardigan over it. I had to admit, it really worked for her.

Yukiko gave a little bow. "Hello. Nice to meet you." She smiled nervously. "I'm sorry this was so sudden."

Chie swatted her shoulder. "C'mon," she complained, "don't apologize like that. That's a nasty habit of yours."

Yukiko's face drooped. "Oh, sorry."

At this, Chie growled in annoyance, then sighed. "Ah, whatever." She turned back to me. "I just wanted to ask some stuff, is all. Well, might as well get going!"

I turned around and we were about to leave the classroom when a boy with brown hair and headphones around his neck stopped us, nervously clutching a DVD case. He smiled uneasily, and seemed to be… sweating?

"Umm, hey Satonaka," he said. Something about him was familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

Chie narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Yes?"

He gave a nervous chuckle and held up the DVD. "This… was really awesome. The way they moved was just amazing to see." He bowed suddenly. "And… I'm really sorry! It was an accident, so please just have mercy until my next paycheck!" he blurted out, shoving the case her hands.

"Huh?" asked a bewildered Chie.

"See ya later!" he said, and dashed away. However, Chie apparently wasn't quite ready to let him go and, without looking, reached out her foot and tripped him, sending him straight to the ground. His face landed on the ground _hard_.

I suddenly snapped my fingers. _'Ohh, that's where I've seen him. Telephone-Pole-Guy.'_

"Not so fast," she said. I made a mental note to Not Mess With Chie.

She popped open the case with a concerned expression, which quickly morphed into one of horror. "What the!?" she exclaimed. "It's completely cracked! What the hell did you do to it!?"

The boy, who was just starting to get back on his feet, futilely tried to appease her, "I said… I was sorry. Oww." He grimaced and massaged his abused knees.

"Are you alright?" Yukiko asked with concern.

Just as the boy was about to respond, Chie cut him off without mercy, snapping the case shut decisively and speaking on his behalf. "He's fine Yukiko," she said with a murderous glint in her eyes. I shuddered. This girl could be really scary. She turned back to the boy and said, "We're leaving, but don't think you're getting out of this one." She paused, and smiled maliciously. "I'll give you a proper punishment later."

With that, she stuffed the case in her bag and pivoted with a flourish, grabbing both Yukiko's arm and mine to march out of the classroom. I flinched and quickly wiggled my arm out of her grasp, latching onto the handle of my bag with both hands. I didn't dare look up to see Chie's reaction, but she didn't say anything about it, and in fact stayed rather quiet as we walked through the hall, down the stairs, and out the door.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

* * *

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

We didn't make it two steps out of the school boundaries before being stopped again.

This boy looked to be a student around our age, but his uniform showed he was from an entirely different school. Probably a private school, judging from how formal his uniform is. It was a full suit with a tie and everything, as opposed to the blazers of Yasogami. He had disheveled black hair and eyes that looked utterly dead to the world.

But even so, I could see the tenseness in the way he walked. He was consciously forcing his body to do this. I could tell because it was something that I did almost every day.

He approached Yukiko as we were walking by. "You're Yuki, right? You want to go hang out somewhere?" he asked with a casualness that I strongly suspected he didn't truly possess.

Yukiko stopped, surprise evident on her face. "Huh? Do I know you?"

"Um, no…" he trailed off, nervously shifting his feet around.

Other Yasogami students had started to gather around the scene, two of them in particular being loud enough that I could sort of make out what they were saying. Something about the 'Amagi Challenge.' The boy's eyes shifted towards them, and he swallowed.

After a very long and awkward pause, he spoke up again. "So, uh… are you coming or not?" he asked tensely.

Yukiko blinked a couple of times, before uneasily replying. "I'm not going."

His face twisted up. "Fine!" he half-yelled before taking off and storming down the road away from the school, leaving behind a very befuddled Yukiko.

"What did he even want from me?" she asked when he was out of earshot.

Chie looked at her incredulously. "You really couldn't tell?" she said. "He was obviously asking you out on a date."

Yukiko's eyes widened. "Really?"

Rolling her eyes, Chie scoffed. "Sheesh. I almost feel sorry for him now. But then again," she paused, "it _was_ pretty creepy how he called you Yuki all of a sudden."

As much as I agreed with that, I couldn't help but feel a pang of sympathy for the boy. _'That obviously wasn't easy for him to do, and he looked pretty hurt when Yukiko rejected him so bluntly.'_ Poor guy.

It was then that Telephone-Pole-Guy - _'I should really learn his name,' _\- rode up to us on his bike, which looked surprisingly okay considering this morning's debacle. He gave a short laugh. "Well, that was pretty entertaining," he said to the two of them. "Looks like Yukiko rejected yet another lovelorn fool."

"You again," Chie growled, and pointed her finger sharply at him. "I still haven't forgiven you, so scram."

The brown-haired boy sighed. "Yeah yeah, I know. Well, don't pick on the transfer student too much." He remounted his bike and rode off down the hill.

"I'm not picking on her!" Chie yelled in outrage after him. She turned to me with a sheepish grin. "Sorry about all this. Let's just get going."

And so we walked. I was starting to understand how startlingly different these two professed 'best friends' actually were. Like fire and ice. Chie's little bout of violent aggression was off-putting to say the least, and I was still a bit on guard around her. Yukiko, in contrast, seemed much easier to deal with, on account of her not wanting to chat any more than myself. For a few precious blocks, I was able to simply enjoy the relative quiet of my surroundings as I walked. However, it wasn't long before Chie did that thing again, the thing that I don't like: talking to me.

"So, Naoto-san," she began, "what brings you to Inaba?"

_'Showtime, Naoto. Just answer the questions.'_ At least it was a question I was ready for. "My mother is working overseas." I replied, a bit more tersely than I wanted.

"Oh, you're staying with your dad then?" she asked.

My body froze mid-step at her words and I nearly fell over. "Uh, n-no, not my dad," I stuttered. "My, ah, uncle."

The brunette's cheery confidence evaporated like someone who stepped on a landmine and heard the click. "O-oh, that's cool." she said uneasily. My face grew a bit red at the utter lack of composure that I was presenting. A moment of dense silence passed before she continued. "Where'd you come from before this?"

"...Osaka." At least this was a considerably safer topic.

She whistled, impressed. "Really? Wow, I heard that Osaka's pretty huge."

For my response, I simply went with the bare minimum. "Yes, it is."

"Man, must be cool to live in a big city like that."

"I guess."

"Sheesh, compared to that, Inaba has gotta feel pretty boring," she said. "We've got, like, nothing to do around here. I mean, that is what makes it kinda nice, but there isn't really anything to show to outsiders. Well, I think our dyed clothes or pottery or something is kinda famous..."

There was another pause, but I stayed silent.

She suddenly snapped her fingers. "Oh, duh, there's the Amagi Inn!" she exclaimed. "It practically keeps this town going!"

_'Yes yes, I already know about- wait. Amagi? Isn't that...'_ I turned my head to look at Yukiko, who looked down shyly.

"It's just an old inn, really," she muttered dismissively.

Chie wouldn't hear it, and turned to me. "Don't listen to her, Naoto-san. That inn has been run by her family for ages, and it's still going strong! It's been in all sorts of magazines as a hidden treasure." She pointed to her best friend with a flourish. "And Yukiko here is gonna run it one day!"

"...Not for a long time." said Yukiko, obviously trying to avoid the conversation.

Chie growled in annoyance. "Oh, come on, Yukiko. Gimme something. We get a chance to talk to someone from the big city and you barely say a word." She turned to me again and said, "She's super popular at school, by the way. Never had a boyfriend though. Kinda weird."

A slight feeling of irritation started to boil up inside me. It was possible that her previous designation as tolerable was a bit hasty. The more I listened to her, the more it was starting to look like Chie was the type that I never seemed to get along with: cheery and talkative to a fault, not seeming to realize when the teasing and the joking stopped being funny. And I had already seen what she can do when she gets angry.

Yukiko grew even more uncomfortable at her words. "Come on, stop it." she pleaded.

Her brunette friend giggled and apologized unconvincingly before stopping in her tracks. "What's that?" she asked.

I looked up ahead to see an unusually large crowd gathered at an intersection ahead of us. _'That's odd,'_ I thought. Chie dashed ahead, and I quickly followed suit.

It was only when we neared the crowd that I saw the yellow police tape and the cop cars parked behind it. I skidded to a stop where Chie stood, a growing sense of unease building inside me. No doubt this was the 'incident' that the school secretary had told us about.

There was a brief struggle in my mind between my curiosity to find out what was going one and my intense desire to get the hell away from there. Eventually, curiosity won out. I simply had to acquire more information about this. Not knowing would drive me up the wall.

I walked closer to the crowd, hoping to get some insight.

It did not take long to find an avenue to the information I sought. "Wow. Who could imagine _that_ hanging from an antenna?" I heard an older woman loudly ask. Bingo.

I stopped walking and strained my ears to hear the entire conversation.

"Aw, I wanted to see it too." the woman next to her complained.

The first woman scoffed, "You got here too late. The police and Fire Department took it down just a moment ago."

An uneasy feeling started to well up inside me.

The second woman continued. "Well, I think it's terrifying. I can't believe a dead body showed up around here…"

My mind froze and my fingers clenched my bag with a vice grip.

I was reasonably certain that Chie and Yukiko were saying something, but nothing they said got past my ears. Time became muddled as the world around me faded from my awareness, which held only my breathing and my heartbeat.

A dead body. Hanging from an antenna. Murder.

These words spiralled around in my head, unable to be processed or ignored.

Murder. It was murder. There was a murder here.

Probability of a suicide was too small to seriously consider.

This was a murder. A dead body hanging from an antenna.

My breathing grew heavier.

I became vaguely aware that people were still talking. Fingers snapped in front of my face, bringing me partially back to the outside world. Standing in front of me was a familiar face looking at me with concern. What was his name again? Oh yeah, Dojima. My uncle.

Now that I had some level of awareness back, I knew beyond a doubt that I had to escape from all these people. There was no way that I would've been able to deal with anyone right then.

So, after stuttering out some excuse, I briskly walked away from the scene. Soon after, when it became unbearable, I began to run.

I _had_ to find someplace to be alone.

Dojima's house was still unfamiliar, but it was the only option I had right now. I ran and ran until I finally reached the house. I dashed inside the house, up the stairs, and into my new room. After locking the door, all of the energy in my body evaporated, and I collapsed onto the couch, unfeeling. My mind shut down as I absentmindedly hugged my knees to my body.

A half hour passed like this before I had finally calmed down enough to think, but not too much else. Looking around from my spot on the couch, I quickly located the already-open cardboard box marked **Nao-chan's Books**. I slowly got up from my position and did a passable impression of a zombie as I shuffled over to it, sticking my hand in blindly and grabbing the first book I touched before collapsing once again on the couch.

Lying on my side, I opened up my newly acquired book to the first page and started reading, only to pleasantly realize that I had picked up one of my favorites: "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes." I cracked a small smile, and read all about Sherlock's scandal in Bohemia.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

* * *

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Several solved cases later, I heard Nanako knock on the door and announce that dinner was ready. With great reluctance, I snapped my book shut, my mind finally remembering what I had been blissfully ignoring for the duration of my little episode. _'Well,'_ I thought as I sat myself up, _'Today certainly could have gone better. I can't believe I didn't last a single day before having an attack. Pretty sure I ditched Chie and Yukiko. Oh, and Dojima too. Dammit.'_

I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair in dejection, all previous moments of peace now a distant memory. I glanced at my clock to see that it was almost five thirty. I groaned. _Two hours._

"Um, are you awake?" Nanako called in again, making me realize that I still hadn't responded.

"Oh, yes I am. I'll be right out."

"Alright. Dad's not home yet, so he said to start without him." Her footsteps receded back down the stairway.

When I got downstairs, Nanako had already started eating and was watching some kid's show I didn't recognize. On the screen, there was some kind of anthropomorphic dog with a monocle and top hat. Weird.

Ignoring that, I sat down at the other mealbox on the table and began to eat without delay. Nanako looked up at me, just noticing my entrance, and looked back at the TV, suddenly looking a bit nervous. I raised an eyebrow, but didn't say anything.

A few minutes passed before Nanako spoke up. "Um, are you feeling okay?" she asked, a concerned look on her face. "You were in your room for a really long time."

_'Crap, she was probably home when I barged in and sprinted up the stairs. That explains why she's so uneasy around me.'_

"I just... really needed to be by myself for a while," I said sheepishly. "It happens sometimes. Sorry if I scared you."

"It's okay!" she said with a cheery smile that proved infectious.

The rest of the dinner passed in relative peace, with Nanako's attention largely absorbed by her television show. Afterwards, I helped her do the dishes, since I had ditched her the night before.

Once the kitchen was cleaned up and my young cousin was once again glued to the TV screen, I headed upstairs to my room. Upon entering, I gleefully propped open my laptop for the first time since I had gotten there, and opened up Portal. I was something of a puzzle nut, and Portal had been a recent acquisition that had already proved quite excellent in occupying my mind. The television was left on to serve as background noise, but when a BREAKING NEWS alert flashed through the screen, it caught my attention long enough for me to see what it was reporting on.

**_"_Our top story this evening concerns a bizarre case in a quiet suburb,"** the reporter began. "**Around noon today, a woman was found dead near the Samegawa River in Inaba."**

Frowning, I paused the game and set my laptop aside. It was about time that I gained the information I had originally desired. A multitude of emotions still arose when I thought of the death that had occurred just today, but I forcefully suppressed them.

**_"_The deceased has been identified as Ms. Mayumi Yamano, a 27-year-old announcer at the local television station, recently being involved in a political scandal. The body was found hanging from a large television antenna atop a local resident's roof, and the authorities are uncertain as to why the body was in such a state. With the cause of death also uncertain, police continue to investigate whether the death was an accident or a homicide. A thick fog common to the area has slowed their progress, and plans to fully canvas the area are delayed until tomorrow."**

_'Unknown cause of death? Now that is odd.'_ I recognized Mayumi Yamano from the news report the day before, though I certainly didn't expect to see her again like this. The thought that her death was an accident hadn't occurred to me.

I picked up my laptop again and opened the browser to research Yamano. Sure enough, she wasn't a resident of Inaba and didn't have any apparent reason to be on a roof in the residential area. The chances of this being an accident dropped significantly, leaving only one option that I could realistically consider.

It really was murder.

I stiffened at the thought, and swallowed heavily. _'Unpleasant or not, that's how it is. Nothing's gonna change that.' _ The silver lining of all this was that my curiosity was now satisfied, and I didn't have to think about it anymore.

I shut the TV off, and regretfully closed my laptop as well. It was only just starting to get dark outside, but the events of the day had taken their toll on me and exhaustion was starting to set in. So, after getting my uniform ready to be worn the next day and setting my alarm, I slipped under the covers of my futon and closed my eyes.

A few minutes passed before I opened them again and reached for my phone. I quickly typed out a text to Dojima, and sent it off.

_**"****I apologize for earlier. That sort of thing happens sometimes with me."**_

It would be best for him to have some level of explanation, but I wasn't completely comfortable with sharing some of my many issues with him either. So, I took the middle ground.

Satisfied, I closed my eyes once again, and sleep quickly reclaimed me.

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* * *

**A/N: Before you say it, I realize there was a pretty big time gap between the release of the first chapter and this one. My writing process is very gradual and involves adding to the story bit by bit every day until I'm done. I won't make any promises on update time, but I will try to do better from now on. What I can promise is that a very large amount of time, effort, and energy go into each chapter, regardless of how fast I get it out.**

**I feel I should mention that I will respond to any question about this that you pose to me in a review, but only if you actually have an account. I can't respond to a guest review. I'm thinking of a few ways to have your questions and my answers permanently available, but that might come later.**

**Oh, and shout out to Unnegated Positive for proofreading this chapter and helping me out with it. Definitely caught stuff I would have missed on my own. Kudos to him.**

**EDIT: My thanks to hinata2000100, who pointed out a misunderstanding I had about the 'kun' honorific, as well as a minor narration issue that I somehow missed even though I was on the lookout for it.**


	3. Chapter 3: Observations

Upon waking up, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the rain had stopped entirely. Already a significant improvement. My morning was similar to the one before. Dojima had left before I got downstairs again, and Nanako and I didn't have much to talk about as we munched on a filling breakfast. The morning passed without me tripping over my own tongue, and I was satisfied with that.

After saying my goodbyes to Nanako, I walked down the bank of the river that I had learned was called the Samegawa.

_'With any luck, I won't be the center of attention today.'_ It was a comforting thought. The comfort it brought was mitigated by my cynical inner voice doing the mental equivalent of rolling its eyes and whispering _'In your dreams'_ at me, but I took what I could get. I needed some mood-boosters to get through the awkward explanation I would probably have to give Chie about what happened to me yesterday. That was not going to be fun.

I suddenly got the strangest sense of déjà vu. I wasn't entirely certain of the source of it, but the answer soon became obvious when a familiar bike carrying a familiar boy raced by me at top speed. He sped around a corner, and I heard a yell and a crash.

_'Oh dear, again?,'_ I thought dryly, and ran after him.

When I turned the corner, the sight before me was so absurd that I didn't even know how to react. The bike had fallen onto the ground, but the boy was somehow stuck in a trash can and completely upside down, with his squirming legs sticking up in the air. _'How on earth did he manage to do that?'_ An annoyingly feminine giggle rose up inside me at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation. I tried to stop it, but was only partially successful, as it was admittedly very funny.

A muffled plea came from inside the can. "Hellooo? Someone out there?" There was a pause. "Please help me."

Forcibly wiping the smirk off my face, I rushed over the trash can. _'Alright, Naoto. This time you'll actually do something about it instead of acting like a deer in headlights.'_ "Uh, hold on a second," I said, and he stopped moving his legs as not to kick me.

_'Hmmm, but how am I gonna do this?'_ I thought, pondering my options. _'It's pretty obvious I can't just yank him out by the ankles, and tipping it over would probably hurt him. But getting the thing horizontal is the only realistic way, so I guess I'll try to set it down slowly.'_

I grabbed one of the side handles of the can, and said "I'm gonna try to let you down slowly, so try not to move." He grunted affirmatively.

The trash can was quite heavy from his weight, at least for me, so I would have to push pretty hard just to get it off its base. My plan was to grab on to the handle and push it just enough for it to get balanced on the edge, then switch positions to pull up on the handle as soon as it started to fall on its side. This would slow the fall enough for me to gently lay it down.

It was a perfect plan.

So naturally, I dropped the damn thing, and the boy with it. It hit the ground with heavy clang, landing hard on its side after I proved completely unable to stop the downward momentum with my pathetic upper-arm strength. This was immediately followed by a yelp of pain from within.

"Ow!"

"Ah!" This yelp was in fact mine, as a result of every feeling of inadequacy I had ever felt suddenly becoming painfully accurate. "Oh my god, I'm so sorry! Are you okay?" I blurted out, horrified.

A muffled and strained voice came from within the trash can. "I'm fine. Don't worry about it." His reassurances were mitigated by the fact that their speaker sounded like he had just had a bowling ball dropped on his stomach.

"I'm very sorry!" I said, bowing before realizing that he couldn't even see me. "Uh, lemme get that for you." I reached down for the can.

"No no, I got it," he said, still out of breath. It was clearly difficult, but he finally managed to wriggle himself out and sat up. "I swear this town is trying to kill me," he muttered darkly, rubbing his head.

"So, a-are you okay?" I asked hesitantly.

He sighed and said, "Yeah, I'm fine." He looked up at me, and his eyes widened. "Hey, you're that new transfer student."

"Oh, uh, y-yes I am," I said, surprised, before bowing once more. "I'm really sorry." _'God, I just make any situation worse don't I? I'm such an idiot.'_

To my surprise, he laughed it off and stood up. "Don't worry about it, seriously. You really helped me out. Thanks. I owe ya' one."

My mind halted. _'...Huh?'_

I flushed at this unexpected display of gratitude. _'W-why is he thanking me for dropping him?'_ With my mind a jumbled mess, it scrambled to come up with a response for his confusing statement. _'Uhh, just… go with the script for this sort of thing.'_

"Um, you're welcome?" I said, sounding more perplexed than I had intended.

"Well, anyways, I'm Yosuke Hanamura. I transferred here a while back, so I've kinda been in the same boat as you," he said, and went to pick up his bike.

I forced a reply out, "... Naoto Seta, though you, uh, probably know that already." I was starting to babble, I realized.

He looked back at me and grinned. "Well, you sit right in front of me, so yeah, I know your name."

My eyes went wide. _'Oh, goddammit Naoto.'_ A strong urge to get out of this exceedingly uncomfortable conversation seized me, and I turned to leave. "I think I should, uh, get going now." I said quickly, and started to walk away at a healthy pace.

He didn't make a response, but quickly caught up to me while pushing his bike, which was surprisingly still functional. "Hey, class is almost starting," he said, walking beside me. I looked at my watch and grimaced; he was right. "Want a ride on the back? Might be a bit shaky, but it's better than being late."

_'W-wait, is he…?'_ My mind froze yet again as I futilely tried to process exactly what he just said. When I hit upon a rather unsettling implication, I felt my face grow red again. The majority of my brain shouted a resounding _'NO.'_ The few opposing factions were quietly pulled into a dark alley and were never seen again. "N-no thanks," I squeaked, and turned my head to stare at the ground in front of me, picking up my pace a bit.

Yosuke soon caught up with me again. "Well, we're gonna have to run then, aren't we?" he said, breaking out into a run.

Before I even realized what was happening, I too was running up the street after him. _'Clearly,'_ I rationalized, _'I do have to hurry to get to class, so it makes sense to run. As to why Hanamura is running with me instead of using the bike he's pushing, well... he finally realized that riding it again would only lead to further injury, so he decided to run on foot.'_

Yes. Clearly.

And so, that was how I found myself literally running to school next to some boy I had just found in a trash can, with some part of me still feeling thoroughly confused about the recent turn of events.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

* * *

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Mr. Morooka reviewed the mathematics material of the previous year in a way that just seemed arbitrarily aggressive. It was as if he was daring us all to challenge his authority on the subject, when he probably could've insisted that 2 + 2 = 5 and not received any backtalk from us. Other than his hair-trigger temper, though, he was actually fairly competent at presenting the material. But the fact remained that he did have both a temper and an extreme dislike for my entire age-group. Had I needed the refresher, his general demeanor would've made things a bit more difficult. I didn't need it though, as math was one of my favorite subjects.

As attention-demanding as his booming voice was, concentrating on him was getting increasingly difficult.

_'...I really wish Chie would stop glancing at me. It's extremely distracting.'_ I still had no idea about how I was going to deal with her and Yukiko, and how I was going to explain anything that had happened. And she just kept looking at me.

_'I suppose that I won't be able to get away with never speaking to her again. Unfortunate, really.'_ I frowned at the unbidden thought. This was going nowhere.

Entrenched in my own thoughts, I did not hear anything that Morooka was saying until he specifically said my name. "Seta!" he barked.

I jerked back into the real world, and quickly stood up. "Y-yes?" I said.

Morooka smirked at me knowingly. "Maybe you would like to come up and write down the answer," he said. Oops. I glanced at the board and saw it held a semi-complicated quadratic equation with the traditional instruction to find 'x'.

I briefly considered my options. Morooka was obviously calling me out by trapping me with a problem I hadn't known was there. The obvious action would be to admit that I didn't know, but...

My response came surprisingly quickly. "Yes, sir." I said, and stepped out into the aisle. My awareness of my surroundings shrank as my feet walked closer to the chalkboard.

_'... move to one side… probably just two separate bubbles... hmm.'_ My mind raced, juggled the puzzle of the equation, and attacked it from multiple different angles in an attempt to reduce the equation to its components. A small but insistent voice in the back of my head alerted me that I had nearly arrived at the chalkboard. Finally, it clicked, and I quickly picked up a piece of chalk and wrote the answer deftly.

**x = -0.5, 2.5**

I knew from the raised eyebrow on Morooka's face that I was correct, and I felt a quiet flush of pride.

"Take your seat," he said sharply. And none too soon, because the adrenaline had already started to fade and my previous confidence was dwindling rapidly. I felt the eyes of the classroom on me, and I quickly complied with Morooka's demand and shuffled back to my seat.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

* * *

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Later that day, I wondered whether my own choices had any actual impact on what happened to me. Was there some invisible hand moving me around like a chess piece? I certainly hadn't planned or wanted it to happen, but there I was, sitting at a table in the local Junes cafeteria with my two classmates, Yosuke and Chie.

It was Chie's fault, I concluded. She was the one who roped me into coming along. Apparently, she had originally wanted Yosuke to buy her a steak dinner to make up for her busted DVD. But after overhearing Yosuke when he thanked me for 'helping' him earlier, she immediately latched onto the conversation like a shark and demanded that he treat her, myself, and Yukiko to a meal. The young heiress wisely declined, and I wanted to do the same, but my mouth didn't seem to work properly in the face of Chie's enthusiasm. Before I knew it, we were out the door and walking towards the commercial district. Which led to now.

"Jeez, Yosuke. What kind of dinner is this?" Chie complained. Yosuke had just brought back a soda and sub sandwich for each of us, and this was clearly not up to her standards.

"Yeah, well, in case you forgot," Yosuke bit back from across the table, "I still haven't gotten my paycheck for this month, so I can't exactly be very generous if you want your precious DVD back anytime soon."

Chie blinked at that, a surprised expression flickering across her face before it morphed into a scowl. "You still didn't have to take us to your place," she said, but with not nearly as much energy as before. His response seemed to have taken some of the wind from under her sails.

_'Fascinating,'_ I thought. _'It seems that even she can be tamed.'_ I was watching their conversation with rapt attention, as it was the only thing I really had to do at the moment. "Your place?" I said before realizing that I spoke aloud, and clamped my mouth shut hard. I looked at Yosuke to find he was already looking at me.

He smiled. "Remember how I said that I moved here a while ago? It was so my dad could manage this place. Being the manager's son can be a pain sometimes, but I do get pretty good discounts, and this place isn't so bad."

"Not everyone agrees," Chie pointedly added from across the table. "Lotta shops over in the local Shopping District have gone out of business since Junes showed up."

Yosuke glared at her. "That's hardly my fault," he said.

Chie sighed. "That's not what I... aaah," she smiled wryly as she looked behind Yosuke. "Look who it is, Yosuke-kun."

Puzzled, he turned his head around, and suddenly stood up. "Sorry guys, I gotta go chat with Saki-senpai. Be right back!" he said, and hastily left, heading towards a girl sitting down a couple of tables away from us.

Chie giggled. "Aww, just look at him go," she said, and looked at me conspiratorially. "That is Saki Konishi. Third year student at Yasogami, daughter of the owners of Konishi Liquors, part-time worker at Junes, and the subject of one _painfully_ obvious crush."

I looked back over at this 'Saki Konishi.' She had long, light-brown hair, and was decked out in the faded tan apron of a Junes employee. She looked… actually pretty exhausted, her body sagging deeply into her chair, but she smiled genially at Yosuke as he approached her. They started talking, but I wasn't close enough to hear what they were saying.

I looked back at Chie, suddenly remembering something that I would've really rather forgotten. _'But I do owe her this much.'_ I considered with resignation. _'And we're alone now, so I don't have anymore excuses.'_ I mustered my courage.

"I'm, uh, s-sorry for yesterday." I said.

Chie blinked. "... Huh?" she asked after a moment's delay.

"For leaving so suddenly. It was… rude." I wasn't sure of how much she noticed when I had my episode, but was most certainly not going to risk telling her more than she already knew.

She sighed, as if in relief, and said flippantly, "Oh, don't even worry about that. Sheesh, you had me all confused for a second there."

"O-oh. Sorry."

"It's fine, it's fine," Chie said dismissively, and refreshed her smile as she bit into her food. Not knowing what else to do, I followed suit, and we ate in silence.

"Hey, Naoto-san?" she eventually said, a small amount of hesitance showing in her voice. "What, uh, happened yesterday? With you?"

With what could only be described as an uncanny sense of timing, Yosuke chose that exact moment to arrive back at the table with Saki right beside him. To my surprise, Saki was looking straight to me and smiling a bit differently than when she was talking to Yosuke.

"Hey, are you the new transfer student?" she asked cheerfully. I nodded, and her smile widened. "Cool! My name's Saki. What's yours?"

"... Naoto Seta." I said with only a little trepidation. _'This girl doesn't seem nearly as tired as she looked a minute ago.'_

She responded without missing a beat. "Naoto, huh? How you like the town so far?"

I struggled to keep up with this up with the girl's sudden enthusiasm, and thought about the question for a brief moment. Honestly, I'd had a pretty terrible experience so far, but there was at least one thing I liked about Inaba. "It's... quiet." I said.

Saki chuckled. "That's a nice way of putting it, I guess. Hey, if you ever want a tour of the town, lemme know, okay? I'll usually be either around here or at my family's shop when I'm not at school, so that's where you can find me." She looked at her watch, and sighed. "Well, I have to get back to work since my break's almost over. Nice to meet you, Naoto-san. Later guys!" she waved as she walked away. I was too dazed to think of waving back.

"Uh, later Senpai!" Yosuke yelled belatedly as if having just remembered to do so. He sat back down, still smiling slightly. "That's Saki-senpai for you," he said to me. "Having her show you around would be a great idea. She knows this place really well."

Chie didn't say anything for a second, having an abstracted look on her face before she shook herself back into the present and put on a sly smile. "Oooh, you wish that she'd show _you_ around town, dontcha?" she said to Yosuke, who rolled his eyes, but receded into his chair a bit.

"I told you it isn't like that." he said defensively.

"Aww, poor thing. Well, I know something that might cheer you up." She looked at both of us with a gleam in her eye, and said, "You ever hear of the Midnight Channel?"

I shook my head. Yosuke did the same, a puzzled look on his face.

Chie continued on with barely restrained eagerness. "Apparently, if you look at a TV that's turned off on a rainy day, exactly at midnight, you see it. The TV doesn't turn on, but the screen starts showing things anyway. It shows a person, and that person is supposed to be your eternal soul mate." She cut off dramatically.

…

I tried very hard not to let my entire body slump in disappointment, even though I didn't think that I'd even been anticipating anything in the first place. Just a stupid, small-town, urban legend. That wasn't even sort of interesting.

Yosuke, as it turned out, shared my feelings exactly. "Are you kidding me?" he said with incredulity. "You actually expect me to believe something like that? That's just some stupid urban legend."

_'Wow, that's actually a bit scary._

Chie frowned, and said hotly, "Well, if you're so sure, then you'll have no problem checking it out for yourself. It's raining tonight, so we should all try it out." While I had to admit that she did have the right idea in regards to using experimentation in order to find the truth of something, I was also fairly certain that most scientists were a little more selective in what they actually tested.

And furthermore, I was not a scientist. Experiments were not my job, and staying up until midnight in order to stare at a blank TV simply did not seem at all tempting.

Yosuke spoke up first, resignation already in his voice. "And you'll never stop hounding me until I agree, right? Ugh, fine, I'll do it. Gives me a decent excuse to stay up late, if anything." He grinned, "And I can rub it in your face when it turns out to not exist."

Chie, apparently, decided to ignore everything after Yosuke's agreement, and looked expectantly to me. And despite all of my previous thoughts, and how deeply I knew just how much of a waste of time and energy it would be, I found myself nodding.

"Then it's settled!" Chie announced triumphantly.

_'Goddammit.'_

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

* * *

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Later that night, dinner was a rather somber affair. First of all, it had started goddamn raining again. Also, Dojima still hadn't come home, and Nanako was sullenly picking at her food. The TV was on, but she wasn't really paying attention to it, which was a bit unusual for her. I declined to say anything about it, as I would undoubtedly say something stupid and make it worse.

Soon enough, dinner was over and the dishes were washed. I had begun to fall into a routine with Nanako, who confessed to me that she liked having someone to do the little chores with. Afterwards, I would've retreated up to my room, but the sight of Nanako glumly resting her chin on the table, watching some home renovation show and constantly glancing towards the front door guilted me into staying in the living room with her. It wasn't like I said anything to her or did anything with her, I actually just grinded through my homework, but I made a guess that the company would be welcome.

It had gotten considerably late when the front door finally swung open and the elder Dojima walked in. Nanako perked up considerably.

"I'm back," he said. "Anything happen while I was gone?"

"No," Nanako shook her head, and pouted. "You're late again."

Dojima sighed as he slumped onto the couch next to me. "I'm sorry, Nanako. I've been busy at work. Do you think you can put on the news for me?"

Nanako opened her mouth to speak, but closed it again. She wordlessly changed the channel to the news.

"Thanks, sweetheart." He smiled at Nanako, and turned to me with a more serious expression. "You doing okay, Naoto?" His words were soft, but his gaze was steady. I knew exactly what he was talking about.

"Yes. I'm, uh, fine now."

He looked at me for another second, then nodded. "That's good to hear." And with that, Dojima signalled the conversation to be over. It seemed that he wouldn't ask me to talk about it anymore, which was something that I was exceedingly grateful for.

The news anchor then began his segment on yesterday's murder, and I took that as my cue to leave. Dojima gave me a concerned look when he saw me get up, but didn't say anything. Saying goodnight to them both, I slogged up to my room. All I wanted to do was to go to bed, and I was about to do just that before I remembered something.

_'Oh wait, I forgot. I told Chie I would watch the Midnight Channel tonight. But… the bed...'_

I briefly considered just ignoring the request entirely, and apologizing once again to Chie the next morning with the explanation that I had accidentily fallen asleep while waiting. While the idea was certainly tempting, an annoying voice in my head kept insisting that such a thing was 'wrong.' And so, as ridiculous as I still thought the whole idea was, I resigned myself to staying up in the futile hopes of seeing this 'Midnight Channel' that Chie seemed so convinced of.

Sighing heavily, I opened up my laptop, ensured my power supply was plugged in, turned off the light, sat down, and settled into my game.

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I heard it before I saw it.

A faint glow lit up the previously dark room with a gentle hiss of static accompanying it. Both originated from the object sitting on the dresser across from me.

I was staring at a computer screen at the time, so my eyes were maladjusted to catch the subtle changes in the lighting. I was also a couple of hours past what I considered the ideal bedtime, so my mind was not especially sharp or focused.

I had muted the computer, however. I had long since discovered that, when I was alone in the pitch black of night, I greatly preferred the near-total silence over any music that I usually used to shut out the world. Without the outside noise, the music simply had nothing to shut out and became more of a hindrance than a refuge. In Osaka, the sounds of the city's night life had been annoying, but I soon learned to just filter it out as background noise. In Inaba, however, the silence of night was about as full as I'd experienced in a very long time, besides the faint pitter-patter of rain outside my window.

So, I heard the hiss. It was very weak at first, dancing at the edges of my perception, but steadily it grew. When I first truly noticed it, it was quieter than a whisper, but still louder than the relative absence of sound that preceded it. I tore my attention from my game, distracted by the sound, and my eyes were magnetically pulled toward the screen of the television sitting on the dresser in front of me.

It was glowing a faint yellow light that brightened as each moment passed.

Before any conscious thought could form, my eyes whipped to my left wrist, to my watch. Some part of me, even before the watch confirmed it, knew that I would see **12:00 AM** shining back at me in a blue neon light.

_'I'll be damned.'_ The laptop was quickly set aside as I stood up. _'This ridiculous folk tale actually has a grain of truth in it.'_ I shushed my brain. It was far more important to see what happens next.

Finally, the screen reached its full brightness, and a blurry and laggy piece of footage began to play. The background was dominated by tall and rectangle-shaped objects that were quite bright - _'Vending machines?'_ I thought, - and in front of them was a girl. The picture was far too blurry to see who it was, but she moved across the screen in a choppy manner. It was like a slideshow being played, as the footage cut out in between positions. Her body moved back and forth across the screen, and it almost looked like she was dancing. As soon as that thought popped into my head, the video was over, the television screen faded far faster than it had first brightened, and I was left alone in my dark bedroom once more.

For a second, the room was quiet.

_'What on ear-'_ .

That was as far as I got before an absurdly loud noise boomed through my skull, and brought with it a disabling spike of pain. I gripped my head tightly, trying very hard not to cry out. I felt myself falling, and desperately tried to stop myself from plummeting to the ground.

My flailing arm managed to blindly grab onto something, and I kept myself upright, unlike last time. The pain was just as intense and unbearable as before, except that it felt louder somehow. It was like my brain was filled with static with the volume turned all the way up.

And within the midst of that static, something resembling a human voice struggled to make itself heard. The voice was female in pitch, and was calm, serious, and, unfortunately, weak and subtle compared to the booming noise now inexplicably filling my eardrums. I did not consciously register this voice, as I was in no fit state to do so, and focused merely on weathering the storm.

The pain left me almost as quickly as it had arrived, and I opened my eyes, feeling sweat dripping down my face. I gasped for air; my thoughts were frantic and jumbled.

_'What the hell was that?'_

It took about a minute to calm down enough to answer my own question. 'That' was a very oddly timed headache that felt like a foghorn going off inside my skull. And it happened immediately after a turned-off television showed a fuzzy video of someone exactly like a ridiculous, small-town urban legend said it would. My thoughts were starting to get disorganized again at that point, and I took another deep breath.

_'I'm going to have to apologize to Chie again. I have to admit, this is an extremely interesting mystery. Now, what is the explanation?'_

I thought rapidly of what it could be. _'Possibility #1: TV is getting remotely hacked, and it affects all TV's in a radius, around Inaba. It turns on TV's remotely and shows a pre-recorded video. Cons: I'm sure if such a thing is even possible on an analog TV, but I must do more research in order to confirm this. Even if it is possible, I just can't think of any plausible motive for doing this. If it is true, it means that someone went to a huge amount of trouble in order to follow, or create, an urban legend about figures being shown on televisions, at midnight, on rainy days. Also, I-'_

I stopped, suddenly getting a nagging sense that something was wrong. Something about… my left hand. I realized my body hadn't yet moved from its position since I had recovered. _'Oh, guess I better-'_

I stopped abruptly again as I looked to my left, but for another reason entirely. The TV screen was now filled with ripples like a pond after a stone was tossed in. Those pure white ripples were centered around the bottom frame of the screen.

Where my hand currently was currently grabbing onto.

And my fingers were gone, ending just after the knuckle at the point where they met the rippling screen.

I could've run a probability check that my fingers had severed themselves without me noticing. I could've checked whether my fingers were actually disconnected from my hand. I could've stopped to investigate what was almost surely a visual trick.

What I did do, however, was let out a panicked scream, yank my hand out with enough force to send me tumbling backwards, and slam the back of my head on the edge of the unfortunately-placed coffee table.

Another sudden roar of pain completely filled my awareness and overwhelmed any thoughts of missing fingers and strange television broadcasts. I hissed in pain and clutched the back of my head futilely. I felt wetness on my fingers; the wound was bleeding, badly. It only took several more seconds for the pain to subside to a manageable level, and soon after that I heard a knock on my door.

Nanako's voice came from the other side. "Are you okay? I heard you yell." She sounded rather alarmed.

It took me several seconds to even think of replying, as I was somewhat pre-occupied by the sight of my bloody fingers, as they decidedly in a state of not-being-cut-off and were fully functional without so much as a scratch. I started making a reply that came from reflex, not any mental decision.

"I'm o-" That was as far as I got before I caught myself. I reconsidered briefly, as I was most certainly not okay. Other than… whatever just happened there, I did definitely have a head wound, and dammit, it hurt.

I did a brief mental tally and thought about what would be the best course of action in this situation. My head hurt like hell and it was bleeding. There were two completely unknown and unexplained phenomena: the Midnight Channel and my apparently disappearing fingers. It was obvious that I shouldn't say a word of that to any other human soul. For the time being, at least. I made my decision quickly.

"Actually," I said, "I, uh, hit my head on the coffee table. Can you tell me where the first aid kit is? I can clean it myself." Nanako squeaked wordlessly, and rushed off to grab it for me.

Beyond a slight dizziness in the first couple of minutes, I didn't seem to be suffering any adverse effects, like a concussion, which was a great relief to me. The next several minutes were painfully slow as I washed and re-washed my wound until it finally stopped bleeding. The mindless activity gave me quite a lot of time to think.

I eventually concluded that there were actually three mysteries I needed to solve: the Midnight Channel, my sudden splitting headache, and my disappearing fingers. The headache was probably entirely medical in nature, but its timing was just plain weird. It hit immediately after the Midnight Channel broadcast ended, and my hand was somewhere it really should not have been when it ended. The hand could be easily explained by me merely misinterpreting what I saw, but I felt in my gut that it wouldn't be so simple. I had read several scientific articles in the past about how gut feelings were almost never as trustworthy as they pretended to be, but I just couldn't shake that feeling.

I finally convinced Nanako to go back to her room after a hundred assurances that I was fine. Even then, she hadn't looked fully convinced, but she finally relented. Admittedly, my heart hadn't really been in it. To say I was a bit distracted would be an immense understatement.

And now, I was in my room, glaring daggers at my traitorous TV that dared to defy what I thought it should be able to do.

Huffing, I marched forward and extended my hand. I hesitated momentarily, but the rest of me forced my hand further forward to the screen, even if I felt stupid doing it. _'Idiot, stop going so fast, you're gonna break...'_

My arm sank in and made white ripples spread across the screen, like I had just inserted my hand into a pool of mercury. Even more strangely, it didn't feel like my hand had touched anything. If I had closed my eyes, I wouldn't have even noticed that I had just done something impossible.

Not being able to help myself, I reached in as far as I could go, until I got all the way to my shoulder.

I still felt nothing.

I jerked my hand back, and quickly confirmed that the length of the television was about half the length of my arm.

It was getting more difficult to ignore the small part of my mind deep within me that was still screaming about all of this.

That simply did not make sense.

I cursed aloud, unable to stop myself, and thought furiously. _'Okay, my arm is going where it really shouldn't be able to, even if this was some kind of fake screen. There HAS to be a rational explanation for that. If there's something that doesn't make sense, find a hypothesis that fits what you already… know...'_

A completely irrational and very scary thought popped up from the deep recesses of my brain, and I froze. _'But… no, that can't be possible. No.'_

I slowly turned my head back to the couch, a sense of dread building up in the pit of my stomach.

Upon the couch sat my laptop computer, which laid abandoned after I set it aside.

That laptop was dutifully continuing to run a harmless little puzzle game I had been playing. A game with a very particular concept and name.

Portal.

Instantly, the pieces fell into place.

My television screen was a portal. It fit everything that I had observed thus far.

I shook myself, feeling stupid again. '_Stop. You are not going to hijack a science fiction trope and use it as an explanation for reality. Something is going on, find out exactly what it is.'_ A thought sprung from my mind, a memory of books I had read long ago. '_What is the proper procedure when you don't understand something?'_

The answer was obvious.

You experiment until you do.

My mind calmed quickly at that, and my thoughts organized as I recalled the steps of the scientific method.

I fished a notebook and pencil out of my backpack. My thoughts were still a bit frantic and writing would help me sort them out. Plus, I remembered that all experiments had to be written down.

_**"First step, ask a question. Why does this my hand pass through the television screen as if it isn't there?"**_

_**"****Second, gather data. What do I know? I know this TV works, it was showing the news just yesterday. According to the local legend of the 'Midnight Channel,' televisions in Inaba show a special broadcast showing the 'soulmate' of the watcher at midnight on rainy days when the television is turned off. Tonight, all of these conditions were met, and a broadcast did appear as the legend stated it would. It was short and blurry, and I did not recognize the girl that was shown, but the television was never turned on by me or anyone."**_

_**"On a possibly related note, I experienced a very severe and sudden headache immediately after the broadcast ended. This mirrored the one that I had two days earlier, though this one was more intense. It is likely to be a purely medical issue, but its timing is suspicious. I also suffered a head wound shortly after the following events, which must be noted."**_

_**"I discovered that my fingers had gone completely into the computer screen as if it were not there at all, and the screen itself was rippling like it was a pond of water. An informal experiment performed shortly afterwards confirmed those perceptions."**_

Writing everything that had happened felt extremely surreal, better suited to a fantasy novel than a science report. Unfortunately, it did not contradict any of my memories, so I forged on and tried to locate a suitable hypothesis.

_**"The most pressing concern is the screen itself. I would have heard about a TV with a literally incorporeal holo-screen if they had been invented, and a police detective in the countryside of Japan would probably not have a secret prototype, if they existed. In addition, it looks and functions exactly like a regular TV, including the sub-par video quality of an older television. Holo-screens that, when turned off, are explicitly designed to look like a normal screen that is turned off is also implausible. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that the TV was designed for this."  
**_

_**"In the previously mentioned informal experiment, I inserted my entire arm into the screen, straightened, and failed to touch the back of the television. A quick check confirmed that the length of the television is about half of the length of my arm. That should be impossible even if it was a holographic screen. The one and only explanation that I have come up with thus far is that the screen is acting as a portal, but that is significantly more unlikely. What my senses tell me contradicts what should be possible in reality."**_

My mouth became a bit dry, and I swallowed. I didn't like where this train of thought, but it was worse than useless to censor myself.

_"**It must be stated that it is quite possible that my senses cannot be trusted, and that I am experiencing a thorough hallucination. While everything my senses have told me seems consistent and completely genuine, this cannot be trusted completely, as my ability to judge its validity would also be compromised. The splitting headache experienced directly after the apparent 'Midnight Channel' broadcast and subsequent head wound throw my own perceptions into further doubt. This is one explanation for events, and seems to be the most likely at the moment."**_

My hands started to shake. Could this be true? Was I experiencing a schizophrenic breakdown? I hadn't allowed myself to think about the possibility before I started writing everything out bit by bit, but I couldn't really deny how likely it really was. I hurriedly continued on before I got too personally distracted to remain objective.

_**"While the previous theory is highly troubling, the other obvious theory is troubling on a much more fundamental level as a rational person. The possibility exists that I have encountered a phenomenon unexplainable, as far as I know, by the human race's current scientific model of the universe. It would be absurd to label it as "supernatural" as that is an inherent misnomer, as the fact that I don't know the explanation does not imply that there is none, so it can at least be said that it is an unexplained scientific phenomenon. That is the second possible theory: that my senses are accurate and I have encountered something of massive significance. All other theories that I can think of at this moment fail to explain both mysteries at once."**_

_**"To summarize, either my senses and memories of those sensations are accurate, or they are not. Speaking from personal belief, I find it highly unlikely that I have developed an extremely sudden case of schizophrenia or another related mental illness with no previous symptoms to speak of. However, that does not hold much objective weight when compared to the much more unlikely scenario that I have discovered a radical scientific phenomenon that happens to turn my television screen into a portal, with all the exact same functions that a portal is expected to have, or something very similar to one."**_

I set down my notebook onto the table. I was starting to sweat more now that I had written out exactly what might be happening here. _'Either the 'portal' on my television screen is real, or it is not. Either my senses are accurate, or they are not. Either I've made an incredible discovery thought to be impossible, or I desperately need to check myself into a mental hospital as soon as I'm able to.'_

I reached for the coldness again, as it was starting to slip away, and it sealed off my worries the best it could when it returned to me.

My clarity returned with it. I had already asked my question. I had already consolidated everything relevant that I knew and could reason to be true. I had two directly opposing hypotheses, and a need to distinguish which one of them most closely resembled reality.

It was time to do some experiments.

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**A/N: With this chapter, having one of my favorite scenes so far, my story is tentatively starting to enter into the realm of rational fiction, which is one of the coolest genres out there. It probably won't be anywhere near the level of "Methods of Rationality," but I'll do my best. Speaking of "Methods," you need to read it. Right now. It is on the home stretch as I write this, and will be completed on March 14th, which is also Pi Day.**

**Beta for this chapter is Unnegated Positive. Kudos to him.**


	4. Chapter 4: Reality

Another wave of deep-seated exhaustion hit me, and I looked at my watch. **2:27 AM**. I swore inwardly, but there was no real bitterness behind it. I really was running out of things to try.

My first experiment was to re-iterate what I already discovered: that I would not touch the inside walls of the television even though I should be. Even the top, sides, and bottom wall weren't there. I put particular focus on my own senses to look for any contradictions, but there were none that I could detect.

My second experiment tested this further. After facing my body to the side of the screen and hooking one arm through it, I closed my eyes and tried to clap my hands. I was prepared for my hands to hit each other by reflex, but I was instead treated to the uncanny sensation of both hands flying through each other. It felt completely natural until my left hand smacked into the television with nothing to stop its motion. It hurt, and I instinctively tried to cover that hand with my other one, but it once again flowed past. I even tried to stick my TV hand through where it thinks my chest should be, and it worked. All of my senses of body position were, in a word, impossible, since they felt like they occupied the same physical space.

The third experiment was to stick my head through and report what I saw. With a huge amount of trepidation, I did so, having no idea what I would find. Bright yellow fog stretched out in all directions with no reference point anywhere. I looked as hard as I could, but I couldn't figure out where all the light was coming from, since there didn't seem to be a single source anywhere. It was just equally well lit in all directions. In retrospect, I should've realized sooner that the thick fog might actually be dangerous to breathe in. Fortunately for me, it was actually breathable and I didn't feel any adverse effects beyond the utter astonishment at what I was seeing.

I shifted strategies at that point. All of my senses were in agreement, but that didn't necessarily disprove the Hallucination Theory, just made it less likely than before. I needed more objective data in order to start seriously shifting the probabilities around.

Fortunately, my cell phone had a video camera. Turning it on, I set it up to capture myself putting my arm inside. The contents of the video perfectly corroborated my own senses, showing a teenage girl pulling off quite an impressive magic trick that would be sure to win applause at any magic show.

Next, I upped the ante and put the phone itself into the screen, looked around with the camera, and pulled it back. The resulting video went: television screen, yellow light, television screen. That was a lot more convincing. If I really was crazy, I would have to be consistently hallucinating both videos over the real ones in order to produce these results. All of this, I wrote down.

I tried everything I could think of, but the universe, or at least my own perception of it, kept giving me the same damn answer. The Portal Theory endured like a mighty stone cliff as wave after wave of tests crashed upon it and broke into a thousand pieces.

_'But still. What?'_

I frowned and rubbed my eyes. The adrenaline had long ago left my bloodstream, and I was now tired all the way down to my bones.

_'Screw it. I'll think of my brilliant next step in the morning.'_ I set my loudest alarm early, apologizing to my future self for needing the extra time before I left for school.

Frustrated, exhausted, and filled with a residual curiosity I could no longer quench, sleep did not come easily to me. Turning my back to my television felt like there was a demon behind me, and turning towards it would just make it impossible to keep my eyes shut.

The night continued like that for some time, until exhaustion won out over anxiety and slumber finally pulled me into its depths.

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The alarm clock blared in my ears, and I smashed the snooze button. It took a couple of moments of recollection, but the events of last night eventually came back to me, and I was as awake as I could be with how little sleep I got. I tried touching my screen again on the slim chance that last night was a dream, but my arm sank into it once again, much to my chagrin. The videos taken last night were identical as well.

'_Alright, still very tired. Need to change that._'

Five minutes later, I was standing naked under the shower head, letting the wonderful hot water fall down on my body as I stared at nothing in particular.

_'Okay, the fact that all of my observations this morning still hold true to my original observations last night adds more probability to the Portal Theory. I don't really know what the actual numbers should be, but I would conservatively give the Portal Theory around an 80% probability of being true. It goes against everything I thought to be possible, but it is becoming increasingly more improbable that I have suddenly developed a ludicrously thorough and specific hallucination without any previous… symptoms...'_

I recollected my experience at the doorstep of the Dojima house just a couple of nights before. I thought I had felt someone's hand on my shoulder, when it was clear that there was no one else on the street. I had chalked it up to jumpy nerves over-reacting due to stress. _'But could it have been more than that?'_ I quietly raised the Hallucination Theory up, so the comparison was sitting at around 70% to 30% in favor of the Portal Theory.

_'I'm starting to reach the limits of what I can test. There's only so much I can do when it's my senses themselves that are in suspect. What can I do about that?'_

Even taking my exhaustion into account, it took an embarrassingly long amount of time before realization hit me like a brick to the face and the obvious and practically definitive experiment came to mind. The only way to get an objective view on my own senses was to get outside help. That meant involving other people. Specifically, that meant showing someone else and asking them to report what they saw.

For all I knew the reaction to be foolish and illogical, my chest still tightened at the thought of showing what that television could do to another human soul. _'They'll either think I'm insane, and be completely right, or see me do something impossible. Who knows what they'll do at that point? And besides, who can I even trust that much?'_ I pondered this question, and could only provide grim responses to my own query. _'Okay, ignoring the problem of personal trust, this is a bit too important to be dictated by my admittedly isolationist tendencies. Putting aside the question of whether I should show someone, I need to figure out who it would actually be first.'_

My first thoughts went to Hanamura and Satonaka, as they both presumably also saw the Midnight Channel last night. _'Did they experience anything like this? I really need to get some info from them today, regardless of anything else. Just one of them experiencing the same thing would practically prove that this portal is real. They don't have my same TV, but maybe it happens to televisions that the Midnight Channel shows itself on. All of this business began with that broadcast, so the two may be connected.'_

_'If they ended up having not experienced the same thing, would they be good candidates for showing this to? I really don't know either of them well, but Chie does not appear to possess a great amount of restraint or subtlety. Yosuke seems alright, but, again, I am not particularly close with either of them. And besides, I would have to get them to my own television first. So, they're not terrible options, but less than preferable if they only saw the broadcast.'_

There wasn't anybody else I knew of that saw the Midnight Channel, so my mind cycled through everyone else I knew here who hadn't, which was a very short list. Besides my uncle and Nanako, the only people I'd even spoken to had been the woman at the school office, a couple of teachers, and Yukiko Amagi. I knew all of them even less than Yosuke and Chie.

I revisited Dojima as an option. While the idea felt like a foreign and alien concept in my mind, some part of me was just nodding in firm agreement. _'What would be the actual downside to telling the person who is in charge of taking care of me, and has been respectful and welcoming since I got here? Alright, let's extrapolate the two possible outcomes of this experiment if he is the subject. If I'm actually hallucinating, I think I can trust him to be responsible and check me into the hospital. If all of this is real, however...'_ I groaned. I had no idea how my guardian would react to an outright violation of reality's laws under his roof perpetrated by his teenage niece. I didn't even know what I was going to do if it was true. It was possible that Dojima wouldn't listen to my requests to keep quiet about it, if I ended up deciding to go that route.

I quietly thumped my head on the shower wall in frustration. This needed some careful thought, so I sat down under the water, closed my eyes, and began to think.

An idea flashed, and was discarded soon after. I really didn't have it within me to just ignore this whole mess for the rest of my life. I continued thinking.

Several minutes later, I opened my eyes and smiled.

_'Oh. Oooh. That could work.'_

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I ate my breakfast silently, and quickly. I needed to have a little extra time this morning to put my experiment into action, and Nanako started eating her breakfast before I did because of my long shower. She was already putting her dishes by the sink by the time I scarfed down the last remaining piece of toast. I glanced at my watch. '_Five minutes to go, plenty of time._'

"Hey, uh, Nanako," I said as I set my plate on the counter. "Do you want to see a magic trick before we go?"

Nanako gasped and her face lit up with excitement. "A magic trick!? Okay!"

"Alright, we gotta do it my room though. Come on." I led her up to my room, and that was when I started getting second thoughts about this plan. _'No, stop it. You've already thought about all of this ahead of time. Last minute nerves is not a good enough reason to put this thing on hold. Just remember. If she's awed and amazed, the portal is real. If she is confused or concerned, you're literally insane.'_

Well, showtime.

I stopped next to the television and turned around to an expectant-looking girl.

"Alright, Nanako," I began, and held up my right hand. "You gotta keep a real close eye on my hand, alright? Don't lose sight of it."

She nodded excitedly and her eyebrows furrowed as she focused hard.

_'Here we go.'_ With a quick inhale to calm my nerves, I straightened my fingers and slowly inserted my fingers into the television, a look of concentration on my face that I didn't need to fake. My hand sunk in as expected and small ripples spread across the screen. I kept moving until it was up to my wrist, and threw a glance at Nanako.

Her mouth was open, and her eyes sparkled with glee. I quickly removed my hand, which started to shake from either fear or relief. I struggled to keep my voice steady as I said "Pretty good, h-huh?"

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If I'd thought that it was difficult to concentrate on Morooka yesterday, it was nearly impossible to even focus on Ms. Sofue today for longer than a minute without my mind flashing back to my current situation. Most of my thoughts were variations of _'You have got to be kidding me,'_ and _'Portal? Really?'_

But I had already done my definitive experiment. Nanako had been amazed and spent the majority of our walk together gushing about how cool my 'magic trick' was. The probability of it all being an hallucination was, as far as I could judge, quite small. I couldn't really test any further without seriously involving someone else in my secret. For now, at least, I was done experimenting.

Now what?

I took a quiet and deep breath. _'Alright, back to sanity. What are my options, assuming that the portal is real? First off, as counterintuitive as it feels, I could figure out some way to contact a scientific authority and get them to take me seriously long enough for me to give them definitive proof of what is going on. I am obviously out of my depth here, and the potential implications of this discovery are staggering. Should I get even deeper proof before going to them? Possibly. I would have to tell Dojima anyways,'_ My breathing actually caught at that. _'So I could first use him to verify this further than I already have.'_

This was seeming like a good idea already, except for what could happen to me afterwards. If this was real, and the news did break out, would I be known as the person who discovered it? That sort of fame might've appealed to most of the people around me, but it certainly didn't appeal to me. I spent a fair amount of effort into being as invisible as possible, and that level of public scrutiny would be a nightmare.

_'But is that so important to avoid that you would hide this from everyone?'_ a small mental voice asked, and I had to concede that point. Hiding this discovery of monumental significance because of the attention it would bring went way beyond self-centeredness.

_'Alright, that seems like a good plan for the future. There is still the issue of Yosuke and Chie, and what they might have seen last night. Today's priority is to get as much relevant information from them as I can. If the Midnight Channel is connected to this, they are the only immediate way I can think of to prove it.'_

That would have to wait until lunch break, at least, though I could feel Chie's smug smile without even looking at it. That was evidence in itself, but it would be better to wait until she stated it outright before I started making guesses.

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As it turned out, Chie also thought that lunch break was a great time to interrogate Yosuke and myself. The only criteria probably being that it was the earliest possible time she could bring it up without disturbing classes or being overheard by every other student present.

Most of the class were opening boxed lunches or leaving to eat elsewhere when Chie finally turned to the two of us and spoke up. "You guys saw it too, right? The Midnight Channel?"

I turned around to see Yosuke give a reluctant nod before giving a nod of my own.

Chie fist-pumped in victory. "Hah! See, Yosuke? I told you it was real."

Yosuke frowned, then sighed. "Yeah yeah. There's definitely something weird going on. Not sure if I buy the whole, uh, 'soulmate' thing." He looked rather uncomfortable at that part, for reasons I couldn't guess at, but continued. "But you win this round."

_'Hmm. They don't seem as bothered as I was when the portal thing happened, but they definitely saw the Midnight Channel. Did they see the same thing as I did?'_

I forced myself to speak. "Hanamura-san. What did you see, exactly?"

Yosuke blinked at me, then averted his eyes to his desk. "Well, I, uh…" he hesitated visibly. "There... was a girl on screen with sorta long hair. It wasn't really up for that long, so I couldn't tell who it was, or anything," he said quickly.

"Huh? I saw a girl too!" Chie exclaimed. "She was, like, moving across the screen for like a few seconds and then she was gone! What does that mean though? My soulmate's a girl?" Yosuke looked at her with a slight smirk and looked like he desperately wanted to say something, but declined to comment. Probably a wise decision.

It seemed that they had both seen the exact same thing that I did, and the 'soulmate' part of the rumor was probably just something made up when someone first saw the Midnight Channel, but there was a distinct lack of sci-fi technology in either story. I ventured another question. "Did anything else happen after that? Something, well, strange?"

They both turned to me with raised eyebrows. Chie frowned in concentration. "Hmmmm, not really. After that, the screen just got kinda static-y and the TV turned back off. Kinda hard to fall asleep for a bit 'cause of how weird it was, but that was pretty much it."

Yosuke nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, it was basically the same for me. Did something else happen for you last night, Naoto-san?"

_'Oh hell. They have **no idea **what I'm talking about.'_

"I, um..." I floundered for a moment, mind whirring - _'No time for a lie, stick with just part of the truth.'_ \- and continued, "... I just got a really bad headache after it was over."

Chie looked at me, the pity clear in her eyes. "Yikes. You feeling well enough to come to Junes today?"

I nodded before realizing what I was implicitly agreeing to.

_'God. Dammit.'_

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* * *

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"All right, so the Midnight Channel is apparently real," Yosuke began, after returning with the drinks he bought for us. "What now?"

Chie shrugged, as if it wasn't entirely her fault that I was in this mess. "Not really that much to do, is there? I was right," she smirked, "and The Mighty Yosuke was wrong."

He sighed. "Yes, Chie, I already said that. But there's no way that something, like, _actually_ magical is going on. There's gotta be some other way to turn TV's on remotely." I raised an eyebrow at that, and chided myself for thinking that I was the only one who would try to think of a reasonable explanation.

She shrugged again. "Well, count me out of playing detective. You can do that on your own." And in contrast, I truly could not imagine myself easily ignoring a phenomenon as weird and surreal as the Midnight Channel without even trying to figure it out, like Chie was. Admittedly, I had actually only spent a few minutes thinking about it since it happened, but I was somewhat distracted. Its possible connection to the portal also made it more likely to involve physics-breaking bullshit, which made the answer a lot harder to deduce using ordinary methods.

"Fine," he bit out, and turned to me. "How 'bout you, Naoto-san?" He looked at me expectantly.

"I… uh," I paused awkwardly, and stared at my drink. "N-no thanks. Sorry." _'Sorry, but the Midnight Channel is the least of my problems right now, and I don't trust you with the information.'_ I sank further into my chair at that, though I knew that it was completely true.

I didn't dare look at Yosuke's face, but I could hear the incredulity. "What? Seriously?" I didn't answer. "Man, I can't believe you guys. One of the first actually interesting things to happen around here since I got here a year ago, and you guys just ignore it. Fine, then. I'll figure it out myself."

Chie chimed back in with a grin. "Oh, cheer up, you big baby. Saki-san's coming our way."

Yosuke's head whipped around so fast that it nearly broke the sound barrier, and Chie only lasted a few seconds before her willpower broke down and she started giggling helplessly. Yosuke paused, then slowly turned to glare at her dangerously. "Shut the hell up, Chie." he said testily.

Obviously, she did no such thing. "Haha, oh man, you are so easy!" She giggled some more.

Yosuke folded his arms onto the table and shoved his face into them, grunting incoherently.

Chie sighed contentedly. "Aaah, that totally made my day." She wiped water from her eyes with exaggerated motions, smiling the whole time. Then she perked up even more and stood up. "Oh yeah, I told my folks I would look for a new TV here today. Mind giving me the tour of the Electronics Department, Yosuke-kun?"

Yosuke mumbled something that sounded remarkably like "Go to hell", but I couldn't be certain.

"How rude." Chie shook her head with mock disapproval, and looked to me. "You should come with me, Naoto-san. Let's leave Mr. Grumpy to pout on his own." She walked away cheerily, leaving the two of us at the table. I got up to follow her.

A new pang of guilt hit me when I glanced back at Yosuke. _'Sorry, Yosuke-san. I would feel just as frustrated in your situation, but I just can't tell anyone.'_ I repeated it in my head, but it didn't really make me feel any better.

Spotting Chie was easy, and we waltzed over to the Electronics Department. She talked enough for both of us, switching easily between gushing about how nice the televisions were to complaining about how pricey they were. I practically tuned her out when it became clear it wasn't a conversation.

A flash of blue from the corner of my eye caught my attention, and I turned.

A butterfly?

_'What on earth-'_

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* * *

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**Pain** filled my awareness and I gasped aloud. My mind burned with a fierce ache and I gasped and coughed. My eyes snapped open, and were filled with yellow light. I couldn't see anything, except the floor I was now lying on. And the floor was… _'red and blue?'_

I sat up in shock, headache forgotten, and looked around to see nothing of the department store I was just in moments ago. Instead, an uncomfortably familiar yellow fog stretched out in all directions around me. Bright stage lights shined down on me, attached to some apparatus I couldn't see through the fog, and strange visual designs of body outlines and a gigantic black-and-white target sprawled across the floor.

I noticed the unmoving bodies next to me and my heart leapt to my throat. Worst-case scenarios rose to the top of my mental attention, and I scrambled over to Yosuke and Chie and checked their wrists for a pulse. Both were alive, but unconscious and unresponding.

I stood up with shaking feet.

It wasn't a particularly difficult deduction, but I still desperately reached for anything other than the obvious implication that my location was probably within whatever place was on the other side of the TV portal. The fog that surrounded me was a clue that was just impossible to miss. Unfortunately, that was my only conceptual reference point. Beyond that one probable suspicion, I had little else to go on, other than the fact that I was in deeper shit than I had ever thought possible.

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**A/N: Still working on that whole 'regular publishing schedule' thing, but it should go faster now. Most of the causes for this chapter's lateness are no longer an issue. My goal is to get Chapter Five, where things start to actually get interesting, out by New Years. **

**Beta for this chapter is Unnegated Positive. What a swell guy.**


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